Chapter 1
Emma’s final words changed the meaning of everything in my hand.
“Boss… the east glasshouse was sealed after the fire.”
I looked down at Elena’s pendant.
Then at Adrian.
His face had gone pale.
The bodyguards standing between him and the door did not touch him. They did not need to. Adrian understood exactly what happened to men who ran while I was still deciding whether to call them family.
“The fire,” I said.
Nobody answered.
I remembered that night too clearly.
Three years earlier, flames tore through the eastern gardens while I was away settling a family dispute. By the time I returned, part of the glasshouse roof had collapsed and Elena was gone.
Her bracelet was found inside.
Part of her dress too.
Enough for everybody around me to say the same word.
Dead.
No body I could hold.
No face I could see.
Only burned ruins and relatives telling me searching longer would destroy what remained of me.
Adrian had been one of them.
I looked at him.
“You told me there was nothing left.”
His breathing changed.
“I told you what I was told.”
“By who?”
Silence.
Emma still held the serving dome.
Her hands were trembling.
I turned toward her.
“How did that dove get under my dinner cover?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you prepare the tray?”
“No. Mr. Adrian changed the service order.”
Adrian closed his eyes.
Another mistake.
I looked at him again.
“You put the bird there?”
“No.”
“Then you knew it might come.”
His jaw tightened.
The dove remained perched on the table, strangely calm.
Then I noticed something tied beneath its other leg.
A thin strip of green cloth.
Elena used to tie green ribbons around the east garden cages where she kept injured birds.
I had forgotten that.
Adrian had not.
His eyes dropped to the ribbon.
And I finally understood why he was afraid.
The pendant could have been planted.
May you like
The recording could have been forged.
But that ribbon meant whoever sent the bird knew something only Elena and a handful of Bellandis should have known.
