Chapter 1
“This collar suits you. Wear it for the rest of your life.”
The black leather landed across Marcus’s chest.
He stared down at it.
Then his face changed.
Not anger.
Recognition.
That interested me.
Victoria was still on the carpet beneath a mess of umbrellas and walking canes, one hand against her cheek.
Isabella stood behind my guards.
Filthy dress.
Tear-streaked face.
Tiny fingers wrapped around the torn sleeve of one bodyguard’s jacket.
I went to her first.
Always the child first.
I crouched.
“Did she hurt you anywhere else?”
Isabella shook her head.
Then pointed toward the collar on Marcus.
“Aunt Victoria’s.”
I became still.
“What?”
Victoria snapped:
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
Isabella looked at her.
Then at me.
“I saw picture.”
Marcus closed his eyes.
There.
The mystery was not the collar itself.
It was something my daughter had seen before Victoria put it around her neck.
“Where?”
Isabella pointed at the dark opening behind the portrait.
“In there.”
I picked her up.
The passage smelled of dust, old wood, and damp plaster.
Rafe brought a light.
Ten feet inside sat a narrow storage recess I had never known existed.
One wooden crate.
One rusted biscuit tin.
Several old family photographs scattered across the floor.
I picked up the first.
Victoria.
Maybe eight years old.
Same eyes.
Same stubborn mouth.
Standing beside my grandfather at a summer gathering.
Around her neck—
a black leather pet collar.
I looked toward the passage entrance.
My sister—no, my aunt—had gone pale.
Another photograph.
Victoria kneeling outside a dining-room door.
Another.
Victoria sitting on stone steps while adults ate behind glass.
Then a folded note in unfamiliar handwriting.
I opened it.
Only one sentence.
Please stop calling her an animal. She is a frightened child.
Signed:
Rosa.
I looked back at Victoria.
“Who was Rosa?”
No answer.
Marcus finally spoke.
“Our grandmother’s maid.”
Interesting.
“And why did Isabella find pictures of you wearing the same collar you put on her?”
Victoria’s face hardened.
“Because some things should have stayed buried.”
I looked at my daughter.
Three years old.
Locked behind a portrait for uncovering a secret that happened more than fifty years before she was born.
No.
This had never been a joke.
May you like
Victoria had repeated something done to her—
then tried to hide the proof that she had ever been the child on the other side of it.
