Chapter 1
“What name, Delphina?”
My bride said nothing.
The ballroom remained silent around us.
Carys still held my mother’s emergency pendant against the front of her apron. Her cheek was flushed where Delphina had struck her, but she kept her eyes on me.
I asked again.
“What name?”
Delphina tightened both hands around her bouquet.
“She’s seventy-two. She gets confused.”
Carys shook her head.
Small movement.
Enough.
I turned toward her.
“What did my mother call her?”
Carys swallowed.
“Marina.”
Delphina closed her eyes.
There.
Not confusion.
Recognition.
“Marina what?”
Carys looked toward the service corridor.
“She kept saying Marina Voss.”
My body became very still.
Voss.
A name I had not heard spoken openly inside Winterbourne House for more than twenty years.
Gideon Voss had once been my father’s closest security chief.
Then he supposedly betrayed us.
Then vanished.
His wife disappeared.
His thirteen-year-old daughter disappeared with her.
Marina.
I looked at the woman wearing my wedding gown.
“You know that name.”
She whispered:
“No.”
Weak.
I stepped closer.
“Take me to my mother.”
Delphina’s composure cracked.
“Rafferty—”
“Now.”
Carys spoke before she could.
“She’s outside.”
I turned.
“Where?”
“The old garden kennels.”
My chest tightened.
We had not kept dogs there in fifteen years.
Stone enclosure.
Iron runs.
Storage now.
Except apparently one cage still locked.
I handed Carys my coat.
“Show me.”
Delphina caught my sleeve.
I looked down at her hand.
She released it immediately.
“Please.”
Not command anymore.
Fear.
“Don’t listen to whatever she says.”
That stopped me.
Not don’t go.
Don’t listen.
I looked directly into her eyes.
“You put my mother in a cage because you were afraid of her voice.”
Delphina went pale.
Then Carys whispered:
“She kept saying one more thing.”
“What?”
Carys looked at my bride.
May you like
“Marina, your father didn’t die.”
Delphina’s bouquet slipped from her fingers.
