Chapter 2
I cleared the ballroom.
No announcement.
No dramatic dismissal.
People understood.
Amabel stayed.
Celestine stayed because I told her to.
My security chief, Rafe, stood at the doors.
I asked Amabel one question.
“Name.”
Her expression softened for the first time.
“Julian.”
My son had a name.
Six weeks old and I had not known he existed.
“Where did you last see him?”
Her apartment above the east staff residence.
Celestine arrived with a private nurse named Marjorie Bell.
Said Julian’s breathing sounded wrong.
Amabel panicked.
Trusted her sister.
They took him.
Then no one returned.
Every time Amabel asked, Celestine threatened her job.
Then housing.
Then finally:
Behave through the engagement or you never see him again.
I looked at Celestine.
“You used my party to control her.”
“She was hysterical.”
“No.”
My voice stayed low.
“She was a mother asking where her newborn went.”
Celestine crossed her arms.
“You have no idea what she’s like.”
Amabel closed her eyes.
There it was.
Older sister.
Younger sister.
An entire private history I had mistaken for household tension.
“What is she like?”
Celestine answered immediately.
“Impulsive. Weak. Dependent.”
Amabel looked at the floor.
Too practiced.
Those were not observations.
Labels.
Repeated often enough to become family truth.
Then Rafe returned with something.
The nurse Marjorie Bell did not exist under any registered household staff file.
Fake name.
Celestine’s face changed.
Good.
“Who was she?”
No answer.
Rafe added:
“The car used to collect the baby belongs to Bellamy Holdings.”
Celestine’s family.
Not Wycliffe.
I looked at her.
“Your father?”
She said nothing.
That frightened Amabel more than anything else.
I noticed.
“Your father knows?”
Amabel whispered:
“He told me the baby would be better off forgotten.”
May you like
The room went cold.
Celestine’s father had known about Julian before I did.
