Chapter 1
“Mother. Where did you take the little girl?”
Beatrice said nothing.
My voice dropped further.
“She’s my daughter.”
The ballroom changed.
Not loudly.
People simply stopped pretending they had not been listening.
Mirelle’s face went pale.
Odessa looked at my mother.
That look mattered.
They had expected many things tonight.
Not that sentence.
Beatrice lowered the ivory mask.
“When did you find out?”
“Yesterday.”
Mirelle closed her eyes.
She had told me less than twenty-four hours earlier.
Three years of silence condensed into one whispered confession in the servants’ corridor.
Her daughter, Lily, was mine.
Mirelle and I had known each other briefly before she entered household service. She disappeared from my life before she knew she was pregnant.
Or so I had believed.
Yesterday she admitted she had tried to tell me afterward.
Letters.
Messages.
Three attempts to reach the estate.
None reached me.
Then Lily vanished that morning.
Mirelle came to work because Odessa promised the child would be returned if she stayed quiet through the masquerade.
Instead, Odessa blindfolded her and turned terror into entertainment.
I looked at my mother.
“Where is Lily?”
Beatrice remained composed.
“Safe.”
I hated that word immediately.
“Where?”
“She needed to be removed from tonight.”
“From whom?”
My mother’s eyes shifted briefly toward the guests.
“From everyone.”
I stepped closer.
“Location.”
Odessa interrupted.
“Evander, you’re doing exactly what we were trying to prevent.”
I turned.
“What?”
“Making a scandal out of a frightened maid’s claim.”
Mirelle flinched.
There.
Claim.
Not child.
Not daughter.
A problem to be discredited.
I looked back at Beatrice.
Then at the mask.
Mirelle had seen it inside the car carrying Lily away.
My mother could deny motive.
Not presence.
“Where?”
Beatrice finally answered.
“Briar House.”
My childhood summer estate.
Forty minutes away.
Not the airport.
Odessa’s taunt had been deliberate.
Make Mirelle imagine distance while the child remained close.
I called Rafe.
“Bring Lily home.”
Beatrice’s expression hardened.
“She is already home.”
That sentence frightened me more than anything Odessa had said.
May you like
Because my mother did not mean Mirelle’s home.
She meant Ashwick.
