Chapter 2
Owen Pike had driven for my family for eleven years.
Quiet man.
Widowed.
No children.
Loyal enough that my father trusted him with Lucien before he trusted half our blood relatives.
After the fire, we assumed Owen ran.
That was the story.
Cowardice.
Guilt.
Maybe involvement.
Convenient.
I had never believed it completely.
I had also never looked hard enough.
That failure belonged to me.
“Who said Owen ran?”
I asked.
Nobody answered.
Sabine finally did.
“Merrick.”
Victor Merrick.
My father’s strategist.
Dead four years.
Of course.
Dead men remain extraordinarily useful to living liars.
Faye stepped closer.
“Lucien told me Owen didn’t run.”
I looked at her.
“What happened?”
“He saved him.”
My chest tightened.
The story came slowly.
Faye had met Lucien two years earlier.
She worked evenings at a small inn in St. Alden before joining my household.
Single mother.
Little girl named June.
One night June developed a fever while Faye was working.
Lucien drove them to a twenty-four-hour clinic.
No questions.
No payment expected.
Afterward he became a friend.
Not romantic.
Not hidden lover.
Just a man who always seemed to understand what it meant when someone had nowhere useful to turn.
He taught Faye the melody because June had trouble sleeping.
“It calmed her.”
Of course.
Our mother used it for the same reason.
“How did you learn who he was?”
Faye looked at me.
“Your photograph.”
Mine?
Six months ago Faye found a society magazine in the inn lobby.
A photograph from one of my charity dinners.
Me.
Sabine.
The Montclair name.
Lucien saw it.
Went silent.
Then told Faye enough.
Not everything.
“He said he had a brother who buried him.”
That sentence hurt.
“Did he blame me?”
Faye hesitated.
“Yes.”
Sabine looked at me immediately.
There.
Too interested.
“Why?”
Faye shook her head.
“He wouldn’t explain.”
Then:
“But three weeks ago, he came to see me after I had already started working here.”
“Why?”
“He said he finally knew you didn’t order it.”
I slowly turned toward Sabine.
My sister stopped breathing.
Lucien had spent nearly a decade believing I wanted him dead.
And somewhere in the last three weeks, he learned that belief had been manufactured.
I looked at Sabine.
“You knew where he was.”
“No.”
Faye answered for her.
“She met him.”
Silence.
“When?”
Faye’s eyes filled.
“Nine years ago.”
May you like
One year after I buried my brother.
Sabine had known Lucien survived for almost a decade.
