Chapter 3 - The Woman in the PhotographThree weeks after I agreed to marry Theodore Bellamy, someone left a photograph of my dead grandmother on my pillow.
That was the moment I understood Giovanni Russo had not been our greatest problem.
I stared at the photograph without touching it.
The guest suite in Theo’s penthouse had become mine in everything but name. My books crowded the shelves. My shoes sat beside his ridiculously expensive Italian ones in the dressing room. A half-finished cup of tea rested on the bedside table exactly where I had left it forty minutes earlier when I went downstairs to argue with Theo about whether six armed security guards were really necessary for a trip to a bookstore.
Nobody except Theo, me, and his security detail had access to this floor.
Yet there it was.
An old black-and-white photograph placed neatly in the center of my pillow.
Grandma Juliet stood beside a stone fountain somewhere in France. She could not have been older than twenty-five. Her dark hair fell past her shoulders, and she was laughing at someone outside the frame.
I had never seen her look that happy.
Beside her stood a man.
Not Theo’s uncle.
I knew what Lucien Bellamy had looked like because Theo had shown me photographs.
This man was younger, broad-shouldered, with pale eyes and the unmistakable Bellamy jawline.
On the back, written in faded blue ink, were six words.
Ask Theodore about his father.
My fingers went cold.
“Clare?”
Theo’s voice came from the doorway.
I spun around.
He stopped immediately when he saw my expression.
Theo had an unnerving ability to become perfectly still when danger appeared. Most people moved toward threats or away from them. Theo simply seemed to compress, every part of him becoming controlled.
His gaze dropped to the photograph.
For the first time since I had met him, Theodore Bellamy looked genuinely shocked.
Not calculating.
Not angry.
Shocked.
“That was on my pillow,” I said.
He crossed the room in three strides.
“Don’t touch it.”
“I wasn’t planning to.”
He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and lifted the photograph by one corner.
His eyes went to the man standing beside Grandma.
Something changed in his face.
“You know him.”
Theo said nothing.
“Theo.”
He turned the photograph over.
The color drained almost imperceptibly from his expression when he read the message.
“Who is he?”
His jaw tightened.
“My father.”
For several seconds, the city beyond the windows seemed impossibly quiet.
I looked again at the photograph.
“Your father knew my grandmother?”
“Yes.”
“That isn’t what your face is saying.”
Theo lifted his eyes.
“My father died when I was fourteen.”
“I’m sorry, but that still doesn’t answer me.”
“No.”
He moved toward the windows.
Theo had spent weeks teaching me how to read powerful men. Watch their hands. Watch where their attention goes when they lie. Watch what questions they answer with different questions.
Apparently he had forgotten I learned quickly.
“You told me Juliet was engaged to your uncle Lucien.”
“She was.”
“Then why is she standing beside your father like that?”
“I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
His head turned sharply.
“I said I don’t know.”
The edge in his voice would once have frightened me.
Now it only made me angrier.
“You know something.”
Before he could answer, Trent entered with two security officers behind him.
“The west corridor camera looped for eighty-seven seconds,” he reported. “Someone duplicated one of the housekeeping credentials.”
Theo’s entire demeanor changed.
“Lock the building.”
“Already done.”
“Phones?”
“Collecting them now.”
“Elevators?”
“Disabled.”
Trent glanced at me, then at the photograph.
“We’ll find whoever entered.”
Theo gave him a cold look.
“They entered Clare’s bedroom in my home.”
The emphasis on my home made even Trent straighten.
“Find them.”
Trent left.
I waited until the door closed.
“Does everyone who works for you get terrified when you use that voice?”
Theo ignored the question.
“You’re moving into my room.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
“That’s your solution?”
“It removes one unsecured access point.”
“Someone penetrated your penthouse and your first thought is sleeping arrangements?”
“My first thought is keeping you alive.”
“There are approximately twenty rooms here.”
“None directly accessible from mine.”
I folded my arms.
“We are engaged. You don’t need a security breach as an excuse to ask me to share your bedroom.”
His eyes narrowed.
“I wasn’t asking.”
There it was.
The phrase that had started everything between us at Luciel Blue.
Weeks ago it would have made my pulse race from fear.
Now it made me lift an eyebrow.
“You may want to reconsider that sentence, Theodore.”
For one remarkable second, he looked almost embarrassed.
Almost.
Then his mouth twitched.
“Fine. I’m strongly recommending.”
“Better.”
His brief amusement disappeared when he looked at the photograph again.
“The person who left this wanted you to distrust me.”
“Should I?”
“No.”
“You answered too quickly.”
“Because there is nothing I would do to deliberately put you in danger.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
He stared at me.
I walked toward him until only the coffee table separated us.
“Should I distrust you about my grandmother?”
Silence.
And that silence told me everything.
“You’ve been investigating something.”
Theo slowly placed the photograph inside an evidence sleeve a guard had left behind.
“My father, Sebastian Bellamy, was the younger brother. Lucien controlled the European operations. Sebastian handled New York.”
“And Juliet?”
“Officially, she belonged to Lucien’s circle.”
“Officially.”
Theo looked toward the city.
“When I retrieved our family archives after your key activated the account, I discovered missing files. Entire years removed from the records.”
“What years?”
“1984 through 1989.”
Grandma fled France in 1988.
My heart beat harder.
“You knew this before you proposed.”
“Yes.”
The answer hurt more than I expected.
“You thought maybe you should mention it?”
“I was trying to determine whether it mattered.”
“It involves my grandmother and your father.”
“It also involves people who have been dead for decades.”
“Apparently not dead enough to stop someone from entering our bedroom.”
His gaze snapped back to mine at the word our.
I had said it unconsciously.
Neither of us commented.
Theo crossed to the hidden safe and entered a code.
He removed a thin leather folder.
“I wasn’t planning to keep this from you permanently.”
“That sounds exactly like something someone says when they were keeping something from you.”
He opened the folder.
Inside were copies of banking documents, shipping records, and several letters.
One name appeared repeatedly.
Sebastian Bellamy.
Another appeared beside it.
Juliet Maro.
I lowered myself into the chair.
“What is this?”
“A private company registered in Marseille in 1986. Aurum Maritime.”
I scanned the paperwork.
“The shareholders were your father and my grandmother.”
“Fifty percent each.”
My mouth went dry.
“She owned a company with him?”
“Apparently.”
“What did it do?”
“We don’t know.”
Theo slid another page toward me.
“The company dissolved three days after Juliet disappeared.”
I studied the final transfer.
Twenty-seven million dollars had vanished through a series of numbered accounts.
In 1988.
Today that amount would be enormous.
“What happened to the money?”
“I’ve been tracing it.”
“And?”
“It wasn’t money.”
I frowned.
Theo opened his tablet and showed me an inventory list.
Paintings.
Jewelry.
Antiquities.
Bearer bonds.
Documents.
Enough assets to finance a small government.
“These were moved through Aurum Maritime,” Theo said. “Your grandmother and my father were building something outside both families.”
“What?”
“I don’t know yet.”
The idea seemed impossible.
Grandma Juliet, who clipped grocery coupons and refused to throw away plastic containers, had once controlled millions.
“What happened to your father?”
Theo’s expression became unreadable.
“Car accident.”
“You don’t believe that anymore.”
“No.”
“When?”
“1999.”
Eleven years after Grandma fled.
“And Lucien?”
“Died in 2003.”
“How?”
Theo looked at me.
“Car accident.”
A chill moved through me.
“That’s convenient.”
“Yes.”
I studied the photograph again.
“Who could have this?”
“Someone with access to the old family archive.”
“You?”
“My mother. Lucien’s widow before she died. Senior family attorneys. A handful of executives.”
“And the Devo family?”
Theo’s expression hardened.
“The Devo name was absorbed into Bellamy interests years ago. That history is complicated.”
“Everything about you is complicated.”
His mouth nearly smiled.
“I warned you.”
“No, you kidnapped me from a restaurant and explained afterward.”
“I did not kidnap you.”
“You had armed men.”
“You entered the car willingly.”
“Under threat from different armed men.”
“That distinction matters legally.”
Despite myself, I laughed.
The tension cracked for half a second.
Then the penthouse lights went out.
Darkness swallowed the room.
Theo moved instantly.
One hand caught my waist.
The other drew his gun.
“Down.”
Emergency lights should have activated.
They didn’t.
His body pushed mine behind the marble kitchen island.
A gunshot exploded somewhere down the corridor.
Then another.
Glass shattered.
Theo touched his earpiece.
“Trent.”
Static.
“Trent.”
Nothing.
My heartbeat thundered.
“Is this them?”
“I don’t know.”
Footsteps sounded outside.
Slow.
Measured.
Someone who knew exactly where they were going.
Theo positioned himself between me and the door.
I grabbed his sleeve.
“What do I do?”
“Stay behind me.”
“That isn’t useful.”
His eyes flashed in the darkness.
“If I tell you to run, take the service stairs.”
“I don’t know where they are.”
“Behind the library panel.”
“You have secret stairs?”
“Clare.”
“Right. Bad time.”
The door handle turned.
Theo raised his gun.
The door opened three inches.
A voice called from outside.
“Bellamy.”
Theo did not relax.
“Identify.”
“Trent.”
“Code.”
“Marseille seventeen.”
Theo lowered the weapon slightly.
Trent entered, blood running down one side of his face.
“What happened?”
“Generator sabotage. Two intruders.”
“Status?”
“One dead.”
“And the other?”
Trent’s expression made my stomach tighten.
“Escaped.”
Theo’s face hardened.
“How?”
“He knew the building.”
The significance settled over us.
Not Calabrians.
Not strangers.
Someone from inside the Bellamy organization.
Trent handed Theo a small object.
A gold cuff link.
Engraved with a black lion.
Theo stared at it.
“What?” I whispered.
He closed his fist around the cuff link.
“That symbol belongs to the Bellamy board.”
The emergency lights flickered on.
Theo’s face looked carved from stone.
“Someone in your company is trying to kill us?”
“No.”
His gaze shifted to me.
“They weren’t trying to kill us.”
“How can you possibly know that?”
“Because if a Bellamy board operative wanted us dead, the first shot would have come through the window.”
That was not comforting.
Theo opened his fist.
“They wanted something.”
I looked toward the photograph.
Theo did too.
It was gone.
The evidence sleeve lay empty on the table.
I felt cold all over.
“They came for the picture.”
“Which means they care more about what it proves than about frightening us.”
“What does it prove?”
Theo stared at the empty sleeve.
“I intend to find out.”
By dawn, every employee in Bellamy Tower had been questioned.
Nobody admitted anything.
The dead intruder carried no identification. His fingerprints had been chemically damaged. His dental work traced to Switzerland but produced no identity.
Professional.
Theo canceled every meeting for the day.
At nine that morning, he took me to Bellamy Group headquarters.
I had visited once after the auction, but this time we did not enter through the lobby.
We descended.
Three floors underground.
Past a biometric door.
Past two armed guards.
Into an archive room that smelled of paper, dust, and secrets.
Rows of climate-controlled cabinets stretched beneath fluorescent lights.
Theo led me to a steel door marked PRIVATE FAMILY RECORDS.
His fingerprint opened it.
Inside were shelves of leather ledgers.
But one entire section stood empty.
Exactly the missing years.
Someone had physically removed them.
“When?” I asked.
“According to archive logs, fourteen years ago.”
“Who accessed the room?”
Theo pulled up the record.
One name appeared.
Eleanor Bellamy.
I looked at him.
“Who is Eleanor?”
He did not answer immediately.
A strange emotion crossed his face.
“My mother.”
I blinked.
“You said your mother lives in Switzerland.”
“She does.”
“She took the records?”
“Apparently.”
“Why?”
His phone rang before he could answer.
Theo looked at the screen.
His expression changed.
It was not fear.
It was something more complicated.
Recognition.
He answered.
“Mother.”
The voice on the other end was too faint for me to hear.
Theo listened.
His eyes settled on me.
Then became very still.
“When?”
Another pause.
“No. Do not leave the property.”
He disconnected.
“What happened?”
Theo slipped the phone into his pocket.
“My mother’s home was attacked twenty minutes ago.”
“Oh my God.”
“She’s alive.”
“Who attacked her?”
“She doesn’t know.”
Theo’s gaze moved toward the empty shelves.
“But before they fled, they asked her one question.”
I swallowed.
“What question?”
His eyes locked onto mine.
“Where is Juliet Maro’s daughter?”
I stared at him.
“My mother was an only child.”
“That’s what you were told.”
“Theo.”
He stepped closer.
“Clare, there’s something else.”
His expression told me I was not going to like it.
“The photograph we lost was scanned by security before the intruders took it.”
He opened his phone.
A high-resolution image appeared.
He zoomed toward the fountain behind Grandma and Sebastian Bellamy.
A reflection shimmered in the water.
Three figures.
Grandma.
Sebastian.
And between them, held in Grandma’s arms—
a baby.
I stopped breathing.
“That could be anyone.”
“Yes.”
But Theo enlarged the corner.
On the back of the photograph, hidden beneath the handwritten message and almost lost in faded ink, someone had written a date.
September 17, 1988.
My mother’s birthday was September 17, 1988.
I stared at Theo.
He stared back.
Suddenly the danger surrounding us was no longer about old criminal evidence.
May you like
It was about blood.
And somewhere between Marseille and Manhattan, somebody had spent thirty-eight years making sure I never learned whose blood ran through mine.
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