Chapter 8 - THE CHAPEL WITHOUT A CROSSCeleste survived the gunshot, but barely.
Ethan’s medical team moved with terrifying speed. By the time police sirens wailed near the waterfront, Celeste was already in a private surgical suite under Lena’s care, and Gerald Vance was gone.
That was what infuriated Aria most.
Not the blood on her hands.
Not the ringing in her ears.
Not the fact that she had stood within arm’s reach of a monster and listened to him say out loud what Victoria had trained the world not to hear.
It was that Vance escaped.
Again.
“He had a tunnel route,” Marcus said, reviewing warehouse footage in the penthouse. “Built into the old drainage system. We got six of his men. Not him.”
Aria stood near the windows, still wearing the blood-stained coat.
Celeste’s blood.
Her father’s name.
The chapel.
The words circled like birds over a grave.
“The old orchard chapel was never built,” Aria said.
Ethan looked up from the evidence table.
“You said your mother wanted one.”
“She designed it. Dad kept the plans. Victoria said construction stopped because Mom died and grief made it too painful.”
“What if construction didn’t stop?” Marcus asked.
Aria turned.
Ethan was already pulling property maps onto the wall screen. Satellite images appeared, layered with old architectural plans. The orchard sat beyond the north hill of Montgomery Estate, officially marked as undeveloped land.
But beneath the thermal overlay, a shape appeared.
Rectangular.
Buried partly under trees.
Ethan’s voice lowered. “There’s a structure there.”
Aria stared at it.
All those years, she had looked at the orchard from her bedroom window and seen only trees.
A building hidden in plain sight.
“Victoria knows we’re looking,” Marcus said. “After tonight, she’ll move whatever’s there.”
Ethan nodded. “Then we move first.”
Aria stepped forward. “I’m going.”
No one argued this time.
That frightened her more than refusal.
By dawn, they reached the north hill on foot, approaching through land Ethan’s company now technically controlled through a temporary security provision Aria did not pretend to understand.
The orchard was overgrown, branches heavy with rain. Dead apples rotted beneath the trees, sweet and sour underfoot. Fog clung low to the grass.
Then Aria saw it.
A chapel.
Small, gray, and nearly swallowed by vines.
No cross stood on its roof. No bell hung in its tower. It looked less like a place of prayer and more like a place someone had built to hide a sin.
The door was chained.
Ethan cut it.
Inside, dust floated through pale morning light. Wooden pews lined the room, untouched for years. At the front stood no altar, only a stone platform covered with a tarp.
Aria walked slowly down the aisle.
Her heart beat so loudly she could hear nothing else.
Ethan pulled back the tarp.
Beneath it was a locked medical bed.
Leather restraints hung from both sides.
Aria staggered backward.
“No.”
Ethan’s expression went lethal.
Marcus cursed under his breath.
Against the far wall stood cabinets filled with old medical supplies, IV bags, expired medication, patient files, and audio equipment. This had never been a chapel.
It had been a private prison disguised as grief.
Aria covered her mouth.
Had her father been here?
Trapped behind the orchard while she cried for him in the mansion?
Ethan opened one cabinet and removed a file.
RICHARD MONTGOMERY.
Aria took it with shaking hands.
Inside were medical charts dated after the accident.
Months after.
Years after.
Her vision blurred.
“He was alive,” she whispered.
Ethan stood beside her, silent.
The final entry was dated three years ago.
Patient transferred.
No facility listed.
No doctor signature.
Only a stamped symbol: a black rose inside a circle.
Aria had seen that symbol before.
On Victoria’s stationery.
On the invitations to private charity events no one below a certain net worth ever attended.
On Gerald Vance’s ring.
“What is Black Rose?” she asked.
Ethan’s face darkened.
“A private network. Doctors, judges, financiers, fixers. They make inconvenient people disappear legally.”
Aria looked back at the bed.
“My father was inconvenient.”
“And so are you.”
A sound came from outside.
A branch breaking.
Ethan moved instantly, pulling Aria behind him. Marcus signaled the team. Everyone went silent.
Then a voice called from outside the chapel.
“Aria?”
Her blood froze.
Victoria.
She stood in the open doorway wearing black, as if attending another funeral. Two armed men stood behind her.
But what broke Aria was not Victoria’s presence.
It was the wheelchair beside her.
In it sat a man with silver hair, hollow cheeks, and eyes Aria knew before memory could argue.
Richard Montgomery lifted his head with effort.
“Aria,” he whispered.
Her knees nearly failed.
“Dad?”
May you like
Victoria placed one elegant hand on Richard’s shoulder.
“Come with me quietly,” she said, “or he dies before your eyes this time.”
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