Chapter 3 - The Woman Who Refused to Be a Queen
The morning after Paige kissed Gabriel Rossy, someone left a dead white rose outside her bedroom door.
It lay across the threshold with its stem snapped and a narrow black ribbon tied around its petals. At first Paige thought one of the gardeners had dropped it. Then she noticed the card beneath it.
YOU CAN LEAVE THE WEDDING. YOU CANNOT LEAVE THE FAMILY.
She read the sentence twice. The words were printed, not handwritten. Whoever delivered it had walked through two guarded checkpoints and entered the east wing without being seen.
Paige carried the flower downstairs instead of calling for help.
Gabriel was in the kitchen, standing over a skillet while Helen argued that a man with his responsibilities should not be cooking eggs. He looked up when Paige entered. His smile vanished.
“Where did you get that?”
“My door.” She set the rose on the counter. “I thought you should know your security has a sense of theater.”
Leo appeared within minutes. Cameras showed no intruder. The corridor feed had repeated the same forty-two seconds of empty hallway all night. Someone had tampered with the system from inside the estate.
Dominic demanded a lockdown. Gabriel agreed to secure the perimeter, but Paige refused the instruction to stay in her room.
“I spent two years being told which rooms I was allowed to enter,” she said. “That arrangement ended at the cathedral.”
Gabriel held her gaze. “You’re right.”
The simple answer surprised everyone, including Paige.
Leo spread photographs across the kitchen island. The ribbon matched those used by the Vance Foundation, an organization founded by Evelyn Vance, Richard’s former mistress and the woman who had kept his master ledger. The foundation funded shelters, medical clinics, and scholarships across Boston. Its public image was spotless.
“Evelyn was asleep when we took the ledger,” Leo said. “Or she wanted us to believe she was.”
Paige remembered Evelyn from Richard’s dinners: immaculate silver-blond hair, understated jewelry, and the unnerving ability to silence Colin with a single look. Evelyn never laughed at his cruel jokes. She had once handed Paige a cardigan when Colin ordered the air conditioning turned down during a winter party.
“Evelyn doesn’t threaten people with dead flowers,” Paige said.
“People can surprise you,” Dominic replied.
“So can the people framing them.”
Gabriel asked Paige what she wanted to do.
“Talk to Evelyn before someone decides to make her disappear.”
By noon, Paige was seated opposite Evelyn in a private reading room at the Boston Athenaeum. Gabriel waited outside with Leo. Paige had insisted on speaking alone, and Evelyn had insisted on choosing the location.
“You look better than you did at the engagement party,” Evelyn observed.
“I was trying not to throw up at the engagement party.”
“I know.” Evelyn set down her tea. “I tried to convince Richard to stop it.”
“Did you try very hard?”
Evelyn absorbed the question without flinching. “Not hard enough.”
Paige showed her the rose. Evelyn’s expression changed.
“Where did you find this?”
“Outside my bedroom.”
Evelyn opened her handbag and removed an identical black ribbon, carefully sealed inside a plastic sleeve. “This was left at my door yesterday. The card said, ‘The Bible has missing pages.’”
Paige felt the room narrow around her.
Richard’s ledger had brought down a financial empire. But if pages were missing, the evidence might have been incomplete by design.
“Who would know?” Paige asked.
“Richard, obviously. His accountant, possibly. And the man who built the transactions in the first place.”
“Who?”
Evelyn hesitated. “A lawyer named Nathaniel Price. He worked for Richard until he vanished six years ago. Richard told everyone he died in a boating accident.”
“Did he?”
“I never saw a body.”
A phone vibrated on the table. Evelyn looked at the screen and went pale.
The message contained a photograph of her brownstone, taken from across the street. Beneath it were five words.
SHE KNOWS ABOUT THE SECOND BOOK.
Paige reached for her own phone to call Gabriel, but Evelyn caught her wrist.
“Listen carefully,” she whispered. “There is something Richard never told Colin. The family Bible wasn’t a complete accounting. It was the version he wanted someone to find.”
Before Paige could respond, the library’s fire alarm erupted.
People rushed toward the exits. Evelyn stood too quickly, knocking her chair backward. Through the reading room’s glass wall, Paige saw a man in a maintenance uniform moving against the crowd.
He was looking directly at Evelyn.
Paige grabbed Evelyn’s arm and pulled her behind a bookcase just as a sharp crack split the air. Glass burst from the wall behind them. The crowd screamed.
Paige hit the floor. Evelyn followed, her shoulder striking a table. Paige crawled toward the rear service door, dragging the older woman by the sleeve.
“Move,” Paige said. “Now.”
A second shot punched through a wooden shelf. Books scattered around them.
Paige shoved the service door open and found Gabriel already there, pistol drawn but lowered as he identified her.
“Both of you behind me.”
Leo rushed past him with two security officers. Gabriel escorted the women into a delivery courtyard where an armored SUV waited.
Only when the doors locked did Paige notice blood on Evelyn’s sleeve. A splinter of glass had cut her arm. Gabriel pressed a clean cloth to the wound while Paige described the gunman.
“Maintenance uniform,” she said. “Gray cap. He knew where she would sit.”
Gabriel looked at Evelyn. “Someone wanted you dead.”
Evelyn shook her head. “Someone wanted Paige to see me die.”
That evening, the three of them sat in Gabriel’s war room while Leo reconstructed the attack. The shooter had escaped through a utility tunnel using a stolen contractor badge. The badge belonged to a company that serviced Gabriel’s estate.
“Same contractor,” Leo said, “that maintained the cameras outside Paige’s room.”
Dominic swore.
Paige stared at the two photographs side by side. The attack had not been a random act of revenge. It was a message about access. Whoever orchestrated it could reach Evelyn in public and Paige in private.
Gabriel turned to his security chief. “Audit everyone. Nobody is exempt.”
Dominic bristled. “Even me?”
“Especially you.”
After the meeting, Gabriel found Paige alone on the balcony. She was holding the dead rose by its ribbon.
“I could leave,” she said. “Take the plane. Become somebody else.”
“You could.”
“And you wouldn’t stop me?”
“No.”
She looked toward the dark trees. “I don’t want my life decided by the next person who manages to frighten me.”
Gabriel stepped beside her but did not touch her. “Then we find the person sending the messages.”
“Together?”
“If that’s what you choose.”
Paige let the rose fall into the wastebasket. “It is.”
At midnight, Leo delivered one final piece of information. The estate’s camera loop had been uploaded from an administrator account assigned to a deceased employee.
May you like
The employee had died eight months earlier.
His name was Nathaniel Price.
