Chapter 2 - The Necklace in the Dark.
Emergency lights flooded the dining room in a weak red glow.
Lucas pulled Amelia against his chest while chairs overturned and guests surged toward the doors.
The scream below them stopped as abruptly as it had begun.
“Nobody leaves,” Lucas shouted.
Margaret's voice cut through the panic with icy authority.
“Do not be ridiculous.”
Lucas switched on his phone flashlight and swept it across the floor.
The hammer was gone.
Vanessa stood near the wall with both hands empty, her smirk replaced by a pale, furious stare.
“She took it,” Vanessa said, pointing at Amelia.
“She can barely stand,” Lucas replied.
Amelia forced air into her lungs and searched the room for the woman who had screamed.
One chair at the far end of the table was empty.
It belonged to Ruth Bell, the Vale family's longtime housekeeper.
Lucas noticed the same thing.
“Where is Ruth?”
Margaret shrugged.
“Probably correcting the electrical fault.”
The chandelier flickered back to life before Lucas could answer.
Every door locked at once with a heavy mechanical click.
Margaret glanced upward, and that single reflex told Amelia the blackout had not surprised her.
Lucas guided Amelia into a chair and examined the pendant again.
The jade had been carved into the shape of a snail curled inside a leaf.
On the back, the three scratches were crude but unmistakable.
Eleanor.
That was the name of Lucas's mother, Margaret's younger sister, who had supposedly died in a nursery fire with her infant daughter.
Lucas had been four years old at the time.
He remembered smoke, his mother's voice, and a servant carrying him down a staircase.
He also remembered a song about a little snail finding its way home.
“Where did the orphanage get this?” he asked.
“It was sewn into my blanket.”
“Which orphanage?”
“Saint Agnes in Bellweather.”
Margaret laughed once, but the sound held no amusement.
“Saint Agnes accepted hundreds of abandoned children.”
Amelia met her gaze.
“Not on the night I arrived.”
The room became still again.
Amelia had spent years researching the torn intake card hidden in her adoption file.
Only one other infant had entered Saint Agnes during that storm, and that child had been collected the next morning by a private driver from Vale Manor.
Before Amelia could reveal that fact, something vibrated against her ankle.
Ruth's phone lay beneath the tablecloth.
Amelia bent slowly, pretending to adjust her shoe, and picked it up.
The screen displayed an unfinished message addressed to Lucas.
SHE KNOWS WHO AMELIA IS. CHECK THE BLUE NURSERY BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
A second line appeared as Amelia watched.
DO NOT TRUST THE POLICE.
The message had not been typed by Ruth.
It was arriving remotely, letter by letter.
Amelia slipped the phone into her dress just as Margaret approached.
“Give me the pendant,” Margaret said.
“No.”
The refusal came from Amelia, quiet and clear.
Vanessa moved behind her chair.
Lucas stepped between them again.
“Touch her and I will expose every account you've hidden from the board.”
Margaret's eyes narrowed.
“You have no idea what she has done.”
“Then tell me.”
Margaret leaned close enough for Amelia to smell the wine on her breath.
“She woke something that should have stayed buried.”
A pounding began beneath the floor.
Three slow strikes.
Three quick strikes.
Three slow strikes again.
Lucas recognized the distress signal.
Amelia recognized the location.
May you like
It was coming from directly below Margaret's chair.
THE JADE SNAIL | A VALE FAMILY THRILLER
