Chapter 2
Aveline slept for fourteen hours.
I made sure of it.
Not because rest solved what had happened.
Because questioning an exhausted woman until she broke would only make me another person using weakness as access.
When she woke, we spoke privately.
No Isolde.
No guests.
No bell.
Aveline explained what Celeste discovered.
The Lennox family had hosted charity dinners for decades.
Politicians once.
Industrialists.
Mafia families.
Old money.
New money.
People drink more freely when waiters appear invisible.
The Lennox system depended on that.
Select one maid.
Keep her awake through the entire multi-day event.
Coffee.
Cold water.
Bell.
Walking rounds.
No full sleep.
Why?
Because she was always available.
Every corridor.
Every late-night lounge.
Every guest too drunk to lower his voice.
The maid listened.
Then reported.
Not necessarily because she wanted to.
Because Isolde’s mother called it “hospitality duty.”
Celeste lasted four nights at her first event.
Six at another.
Then she started writing down what she was ordered to remember.
Names.
Affairs.
Debts.
Arguments.
Hidden alliances.
Not to blackmail anyone.
To protect herself.
If something happened, she wanted proof she had been made part of it.
“Did Isolde know?”
Aveline laughed bitterly.
“She ran the last two events.”
There.
No inherited misunderstanding.
Participation.
“What happened after Celeste found the guest book?”
“She called me.”
Then disappeared.
The official story came the next morning.
Resigned.
Left town.
New job.
Aveline never believed it.
She searched.
Found nothing.
Then applied to work at my hotel after learning Isolde would host the fundraiser here.
I looked at her.
“You came here for your sister.”
“Yes.”
“Not the job.”
“No.”
Good.
Intent mattered.
Then she whispered:
“I found something yesterday.”
My eyes narrowed.
“In Isolde’s dressing room.”
Aveline reached into the pocket of her cardigan.
One small key.
Black ribbon attached.
Stamped with one word.
ARCHIVE.
I looked at it.
Then toward the closed door.
May you like
Isolde had brought the old Lennox system into my house.
And somewhere nearby, she had apparently built an archive to store what exhausted women were forced to hear.
