Chapter 2
Rafe found Gabriel twelve minutes later.
Alive.
His car sat crooked beside the private north road with one damaged wheel and the engine dead.
No collision.
No serious injury.
Cole Mercer was gone.
A second vehicle had been seen leaving through the service lane.
That was enough for now.
When Gabriel entered the mansion, the ballroom had been cleared.
Only family security remained.
Celeste sat in the library under watch.
Nora had been taken to have her wrist and nerves checked by the house physician.
She was physically fine.
Shaken.
Gabriel stood in my foyer carrying one leather travel bag.
Eight years older.
Thinner.
A scar beside one eyebrow I did not remember.
He looked at me.
“You still wear three-piece suits to dinner.”
I almost laughed.
Instead:
“You still arrive dramatically.”
He looked toward the front windows.
“That wasn’t my idea.”
Silence.
Eight years vanished badly.
No hug.
No apology.
Not yet.
Then Gabriel asked:
“Where’s Celeste?”
That told me he already knew too much.
“In the library.”
His face hardened.
“Then she knows I came.”
“She tried to stop you.”
He nodded once.
As though confirming something.
I hated that.
“What do you know?”
Gabriel looked at me for a long moment.
Then he opened his bag.
No ledger.
No gun.
No dramatic file.
Just an old wooden cigar box.
My father’s.
I recognized the burn mark on one corner.
Gabriel put it on the table.
“You remember this?”
“Yes.”
Father kept letters in it.
Photographs.
Small things from family meetings.
After his death, the box disappeared.
I assumed it had been thrown away.
Gabriel opened it.
Inside lay one black fountain pen, an old brass key, and a silver tie clip engraved with the Ward crest.
Celeste’s family.
I looked up.
“What does this prove?”
“Nothing by itself.”
Good answer.
Then Gabriel removed the false bottom.
Beneath it was a small reel of film.
Not audio.
Security film.
Old analog surveillance from the basement corridor of our father’s original house.
The night Gabriel was accused of betrayal.
I stared.
“Where did you get this?”
“Alistair Ward’s storage room.”
My jaw tightened.
Celeste’s father had kept the original recording.
Not the copy shown to us.
The original.
Gabriel looked at me.
“The evidence that destroyed me was edited.”
Eight years of silence shifted inside my chest.
May you like
Then he added:
“And Celeste knew before she agreed to marry you.”
