Chapter 1
“I’ve still been sending money regularly... Then whose treatment did I pay for yesterday?”
Sibella’s smile disappeared.
Nerelle looked at me as though I had spoken in another language.
“What?”
I did not take my eyes off my fiancée.
“Every month.”
My voice stayed low.
“Treatment. Medication. Transportation. Anything her doctors approved.”
Sibella glanced toward the donors.
Wrong direction.
“Nerelle.”
The maid tightened both hands around her wig.
“Yes, sir?”
“When was your last treatment?”
Her lips trembled.
“Six weeks ago.”
Something inside me became very quiet.
“Why?”
She swallowed.
“Miss Sibella said the account was closed.”
I looked at Sibella.
“The account was never closed.”
She whispered:
“Alban—”
“No.”
I pointed toward the portrait.
Nerelle smiling beneath professionally arranged hair and soft lighting.
The centerpiece of tonight’s charity dinner.
Hundreds of thousands already pledged because donors had been told the event supported people like her.
Yet the actual woman stood in housekeeping shoes because she believed I had stopped funding her care.
“Who received yesterday’s treatment?”
Sibella said nothing.
I stepped closer.
“Whose name?”
Her eyes filled.
Not guilt alone.
Fear.
Then a woman near the donor table slowly stood.
Late sixties.
Elegant.
Pale.
I recognized her immediately.
Celestine Mercer.
Sibella’s mother.
She looked from her daughter to me.
Then whispered:
“What treatment?”
Sibella shut her eyes.
That was enough.
Celestine moved toward us.
“What did you do?”
Sibella’s voice broke.
“Mom, please.”
Celestine stared.
“I thought you sold the Lake Street apartment.”
No one moved.
I understood.
Celestine had been undergoing cancer treatment privately.
I knew she had been ill years earlier.
I did not know it had returned.
Apparently neither did most people in the ballroom.
I looked at Sibella.
“You used Nerelle’s money.”
“It wasn’t hers.”
Nerelle flinched.
I heard it.
Sibella heard it too late.
I looked at her.
“Say that again.”
Her face crumpled.
“The account was yours.”
“No.”
My voice dropped.
“The money was mine.”
Then I pointed toward Nerelle.
“The purpose was hers.”
Celestine covered her mouth.
May you like
Sibella began crying.
And Nerelle, still holding the wig her illness had made necessary, finally understood why the woman in the fundraising portrait had been allowed to become sicker while somebody else received the care meant for her.
