Chapter 2
Valeria asked to send Ava home.
For once, we agreed.
Margaret went with her.
Not because I ordered it.
Because Ava refused to release her hand.
Before they left, I crouched.
“Grandma is okay.”
Ava’s lower lip trembled.
“Valeria pushed her.”
“Yes.”
“Bad?”
“Yes.”
Three-year-old morality.
Clean.
I kissed her forehead.
Then Mother stopped beside me.
“Don’t let the kiss distract you.”
I looked at her.
She tapped the photograph.
“That bottle frightened her more than Luca’s face.”
My mother had always been irritatingly observant.
Good.
After they left, I took Valeria and Lucian downstairs.
The Caradonna atelier formulation room smelled of iris, cedar, bergamot, and money.
Rows of dark glass bottles lined chilled cabinets.
At the center sat a locked steel drawer containing three master concentrates for the evening’s launch.
I opened it.
Two vials.
There should have been three.
Lucian looked away.
“Which one?”
I asked the chief perfumer.
Helena Marsh checked the handwritten tags.
“Orison.”
My chest tightened.
Orison was tonight’s centerpiece.
Four years developing it.
Rare Florentine orris aged in sealed glass.
A base accord created personally for Caradonna.
Not merely expensive.
Recognizable.
If another house reproduced it before our wider release, everyone in the luxury fragrance world would know someone inside Caradonna had opened the door.
“When was the vial last checked?”
“Yesterday afternoon.”
After the airport.
Interesting.
Meaning the stolen vial had been replaced temporarily.
Helena opened another drawer.
A third vial sat there.
Half full.
She smelled it.
Her face hardened.
“Diluted.”
So someone had taken the real concentrate, replaced it with a weakened mixture, then moved the substitute after realizing inventory might be checked.
I turned toward Valeria.
“How long?”
She whispered:
“Three months.”
Not the kiss.
The theft.
Three months.
Lucian swore under his breath.
Apparently he had hoped she would lie differently.
I looked at him.
“You helped?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
His answer came almost angrily.
“Because you were never going to give her anything of her own.”
Valeria looked at him.
There.
Sibling grievance.
I returned my attention to her.
“What did Luca promise?”
Silence.
Then:
“A house.”
I frowned.
“Which house?”
“Not a mansion.”
She looked around the formulation room.
“A fragrance house.”
Now I understood.
May you like
This was not Luca stealing my perfume.
This was Valeria planning to leave Caradonna carrying enough of its scent to build something that would compete with it.
