Chapter 2
The old nursery corridor had one feature most people forgot.
A service passage.
Built when the mansion still required servants to move between bedrooms without crossing formal halls.
Elise knew every inch of it.
So did I.
Camille apparently learned.
I handed Oliver to Rafe, my most trusted bodyguard.
My son refused at first.
He held Nora harder.
That mattered.
“Nora goes with him,” I said.
Camille snapped:
“She is staff.”
I looked at her.
“She is currently the person my son feels safe with.”
Silence.
Nora left with Rafe and Oliver.
Only then did I face Camille.
“What was Adrian looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
Wrong.
I stepped closer.
“You locked my child away so your brother could enter my dead wife’s rooms.”
Her expression cracked.
“I didn’t know he would search them.”
“Then why give him access?”
“He said Elise left something belonging to the Sterlings.”
Interesting.
Elise had been born Elise Arden.
Nothing Sterling.
Camille continued.
“Something your wife received before she married you.”
“What?”
“She never told me.”
I almost smiled.
“You expect me to believe you endangered my son over an object you can’t name?”
Her voice rose.
“I did not endanger Oliver.”
The sentence barely finished before Rafe returned.
Without the child.
Good.
He carried something else.
A small wooden music box.
I recognized it instantly.
Elise kept it inside the locked cabinet beside her dressing room.
I had not opened that cabinet since she died.
“Where did you get that?”
Rafe placed it on the table.
“Nora found it beneath Oliver’s bed three days ago.”
Camille stopped breathing.
The music box had a broken silver hinge.
Freshly forced.
Inside, beneath the velvet lining, was an empty rectangular space.
Something had been removed.
I looked at Camille.
“What was inside?”
No answer.
Then Rafe handed me another object.
A black velvet strip.
Caught beneath the music box lining.
Stamped in silver:
STERLING.
Camille closed her eyes.
May you like
Her brother had already found what he came for.
And whatever he removed from my dead wife’s box was important enough that Camille had imprisoned my son nine nights to give him time to search.
