The Missing Attendant
Chapter 07 - The Missing Attendant
The cathedral attendant who carried the silver cup was named Emily Ross.
She was twenty-three, newly hired and missing since the wedding.
Police found her car at a train station. Her phone had been left inside, powered off. A ticket in her name showed travel to the northern border, but station cameras never captured her boarding.
Sophie remembered Emily from the rehearsal. She had been nervous and repeatedly checked the ceremonial cup against a printed instruction sheet.
The palace released a statement implying Emily acted alone.
Marcus’s office described her as financially troubled.
Ortiz examined her accounts.
Two days before the wedding, a company connected to Owen paid Emily’s mother’s medical debt. That looked like bribery until investigators found a voice message Emily sent Sophie’s assistant minutes before the ceremony.
“Captain Vale changed the cup after inspection. I think something is wrong. Please stop the toast.”
The message had been deleted from the assistant’s phone before delivery.
Hospital technicians recovered it from cloud storage.
Emily had tried to warn them.
Search teams found her in an unused caretaker’s cottage on royal land. She was alive, sedated and locked inside.
When she woke, she explained that Owen threatened her mother and forced her to carry the replacement cup. Emily believed it contained only a harmless substance designed to make Adrian ill and delay the reform speech.
After Adrian collapsed, she panicked.
Owen’s men abducted her before she could reach police.
Emily identified the silver cup recovered from the palace evidence room as a replacement. The real ceremonial cup had a scratch beneath the handle from the rehearsal.
The stored cup had none.
Someone had replaced the evidence twice.
Ortiz searched Marcus’s private wine cellar and found the original cup hidden inside a locked cabinet. Residue in the engraving matched Adrian’s blood toxin.
Marcus said Owen placed it there.
Owen said Marcus ordered him to.
The conspiracy began turning inward.
Sophie visited Emily in the hospital and apologized for not receiving the warning.
Emily cried.
“I carried the cup.”
“You also tried to stop it.”
“I should have refused.”
May you like
Sophie understood the trap. Powerful people depended on frightened employees believing one coerced act made them responsible for everything that followed.
“Tell the truth now,” she said. “That is where your responsibility begins.”
