Chapter 1
Vincent Romano did not raise his voice.
That was worse.
He set the black ledger beside his father’s photograph and looked at Celeste as if he had never seen her before.
“What did you tell them?”
Celeste’s mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
The candles along the table burned steadily, their small flames reflected in crystal glasses and polished silver. Outside the dining room windows, rain pressed against the old limestone house in long gray sheets. Somewhere beyond the west lawn, thunder rolled over the Hudson.
I stood beside the sideboard with blood soaking through my bandages.
My palms stung.
My forearms burned.
The cut on my cheek throbbed every time my jaw moved.
But for the first time that evening, nobody was looking at my injuries like they were an inconvenience.
They were looking at Celeste.
Vincent’s uncle, Anthony Romano, slowly placed his wineglass on the table.
“What is she talking about?” he asked.
Celeste turned toward him immediately.
“Grace misunderstood what she saw.”
I laughed once.
I couldn’t help it.
The sound was small.
Painful.
And very dangerous.
Celeste looked at me.
“Do you find this funny?”
“No, ma’am.”
“Then stop behaving like a child.”
Vincent’s eyes flicked to my face.
“Grace,” he said quietly. “Tell me exactly what happened.”
Celeste moved toward him.
“Vincent—”
He lifted one tattooed hand.
“Sit down.”
She froze.
The room did too.
Vincent Romano was thirty-seven years old.
He had inherited Romano Shipping six months earlier after his father, Carlo, died suddenly in his study. The newspapers described Vincent as controlled, private, severe. Employees described him in lower voices.
Fair.
Unforgiving.
Impossible to manipulate.
Celeste had been engaged to him for four months.
Tonight was supposed to be a memorial dinner for Carlo.
Instead, I had just dropped proof of extortion beside Vincent’s plate.
Celeste slowly sat.
Vincent turned back to me.
“Start from this afternoon.”
I swallowed.
“At three fifteen, I went into the old accounting room to get extra linen inventory forms.”
“Why there?”
“Mrs. Dalca said the new folders had been moved there.”
At the far end of the table, Mrs. Dalca, the housekeeper, nodded.
“They were.”
I continued.
“The door was half open. I heard paper tearing.”
Celeste’s expression sharpened.
Vincent noticed.
“What paper?”
“Receipts.”
“For what?”
“Payments.”
“From whom?”
“The people in the ledger.”
One of the guests, an older woman named Marianne Holt, went pale.
I recognized her name.
Page seven.
Five thousand dollars.
Vincent saw her reaction.
“So you paid?” he asked.
Marianne looked down.
Celeste spoke first.
“She wanted to contribute.”
Marianne’s hands tightened around her napkin.
“No.”
The single word changed the room again.
Celeste turned.
Marianne looked up.
Her eyes were wet.
“I was told Mr. Romano had left instructions that only immediate family and selected business partners would attend tonight. I was told that if I wanted my husband’s name included in the memorial program, I had to contribute five thousand dollars through Bellini Event Holdings.”
Vincent stared at her.
“My father was your husband’s godfather.”
“Yes.”
“And you believed I banned you from his memorial?”
Marianne looked ashamed.
“I didn’t want to believe it.”
Celeste said sharply, “This is ridiculous.”
Vincent ignored her.
He looked at me.
“What happened after you found the receipts?”
“I stepped into the room.”
My injured hand trembled harder.
I pressed it against my apron.
“Celeste was feeding them into the fireplace.”
Anthony pushed back his chair.
“She was burning them?”
“Yes.”
Celeste’s face became flat.
“Careful, Grace.”
Vincent heard that.
“So did I.”
She turned to him.
“I mean she should be careful making accusations she can’t prove.”
I looked at the ledger.
“She told me the book was none of my business.”
Vincent’s jaw tightened.
“And then?”
“I said the names looked familiar.”
“Because?”
“Some had called the house.”
I remembered those calls.
A former chauffeur who had worked for Carlo for twenty-nine years.
A gardener’s widow.
A retired dock supervisor.
A neighbor from the Bronx where Carlo had grown up.
Each had asked the same thing in a different way.
Did Mr. Vincent really say we weren’t welcome?
Each time, Celeste had taken the call.
Each time, she had closed the study door.
“I asked why people had to pay to attend a memorial dinner,” I said.
Celeste interrupted.
“She became hysterical.”
“I asked one question.”
“You accused me of theft.”
“You grabbed my wrist.”
The room went quiet.
Celeste’s eyes dropped to my bandages.
Vincent saw it.
His voice became colder.
“Show me.”
I didn’t understand.
“Sir?”
“Your wrist.”
I raised my left arm.
There were red finger-shaped marks above the gauze.
Vincent stood.
Not fast.
Not dramatically.
He simply stood, and every person at that table became aware of his height, his silence, and the fact that he had stopped pretending the evening could still be civilized.
“Who did that?”
I looked at Celeste.
Her expression said don’t.
My answer came anyway.
“She did.”
Celeste jumped up.
“She was trying to take confidential financial material from my private office.”
“It wasn’t your office,” Mrs. Dalca said.
Everyone looked at her.
The housekeeper rarely spoke at formal dinners.
She stood near the back wall in her black uniform, hands folded.
“That room belonged to Mr. Carlo.”
Vincent turned.
“Did Celeste have permission to use it?”
Mrs. Dalca hesitated.
“No, sir.”
Celeste’s voice rose.
“This is absurd. We are discussing household storage while a maid stages some melodramatic performance with a kitchen knife.”
My face burned.
I hated that part because it worked.
Several guests glanced at me.
At the cuts.
At the blood.
At the knife resting beside the figs.
The picture was ugly.
Unstable.
Exactly what Celeste wanted.
Vincent noticed that too.
He walked around the table and stopped in front of me.
“Grace.”
“Yes?”
“Look at me.”
I did.
His eyes were not soft.
Vincent Romano did not have soft eyes.
But they were focused.
Steady.
“Did you cut yourself?”
“No.”
“Did you threaten Celeste with that knife?”
“No.”
“Did you hurt anyone tonight?”
“No.”
He nodded once.
“Then we’re not going to let the room invent a story because your hands are bleeding.”
Celeste stared at him.
“Vincent.”
He turned.
“Who cut her?”
Silence.
Rain rattled harder against the glass.
A younger man at the table, Vincent’s cousin Matteo, looked from Celeste to me.
“You’re saying someone attacked the maid over a ledger?”
“Housekeeper’s assistant,” Mrs. Dalca corrected.
Matteo blinked.
She did not.
I almost smiled.
Then Vincent asked the question I had been afraid of.
“Grace. Who cut you?”
My throat tightened.
Because that answer was more complicated.
“Not Celeste.”
Celeste exhaled immediately.
“There.”
Vincent didn’t move.
“Who?”
I looked toward the closed service door.
“Her brother.”
Celeste went white.
Anthony whispered, “Adrian?”
I nodded.
Vincent’s expression changed.
Not shock.
Recognition.
He had expected something.
That frightened me more.
“When?” he asked.
“After I found the ledger.”
“Where?”
“In the greenhouse corridor.”
“What did he use?”
“A broken piece of the old pruning frame.”
Celeste slammed her hand against the table.
“My brother is in Boston.”
“No,” I said.
“He was here at four.”
“You’re lying.”
“He said you told him to scare me.”
“I never—”
“He said if I spoke to Vincent, I’d lose more than my job.”
Celeste came around the table.
Vincent stepped between us.
She stopped.
For the first time, fear appeared beneath her anger.
Not fear of me.
Fear of him.
Vincent looked toward Matteo.
“Lock the exterior gates.”
Celeste stared.
“What?”
“Now.”
Matteo pulled out his phone.
She moved toward him.
“You can’t hold people here.”
Vincent said, “Anyone who wants to leave can leave.”
Then he looked directly at her.
“But no vehicles leave until I know whether Adrian Bellini is on this property.”
“You are insane.”
“Maybe.”
His voice was almost calm.
“But if he is here, we’re done pretending.”
The dining room door opened.
A security guard stepped inside.
“Mr. Romano?”
“What?”
“There’s someone at the south gate.”
Vincent looked at him.
“Who?”
The guard glanced at Celeste.
“Adrian Bellini.”
Nobody spoke.
Celeste’s hand slowly lowered from the table.
Vincent turned toward her.
“You said he was in Boston.”
Her lips parted.
“He was supposed to be.”
“Interesting.”
The guard continued.
“He’s trying to leave.”
Vincent’s eyes hardened.
“Bring him to the library.”
Celeste stepped forward.
“No.”
Vincent looked at her.
“I wasn’t asking.”
He picked up the black ledger.
Then he lifted his father’s photograph.
For one strange second, he studied the image.
Carlo Romano smiling beside a sailboat.
White hair.
Heavy eyebrows.
A hand raised against sunlight.
Vincent’s face changed again.
Grief passed through it so quickly I almost missed it.
Then suspicion replaced it.
He opened the ledger once more.
His thumb stopped on the final pages.
“What is this?”
I knew what he had found.
That was why I had been trying to get the ledger into his hands before Celeste caught me.
Not the payments.
Not the names.
Something worse.
I walked closer.
Celeste whispered, “Grace, don’t.”
Vincent looked at the page.
There were three columns.
Date.
Amount.
Initials.
The final entry had been written eight days before Carlo Romano died.
$40,000.
C.R.
Vincent’s finger froze.
He turned the page.
Another entry.
$60,000.
C.R.
Then another.
$25,000.
C.R.
Anthony stood.
“Carlo paid her?”
Celeste’s face had lost all color.
Vincent looked at me.
“Where are the receipts for these?”
“Those were the ones she burned first.”
His eyes sharpened.
“You saw the names?”
“No.”
“Account number?”
“Only the ending.”
“What ending?”
I took a breath.
“7714.”
Anthony’s chair scraped violently.
Vincent looked at him.
The older man’s face had gone gray.
“What?”
Anthony stared at the ledger.
“No.”
“What is account 7714?”
Anthony didn’t answer.
Vincent’s voice became dangerous.
“Uncle.”
Anthony looked at him.
“That was your father’s private medical trust.”
A pulse moved in Vincent’s jaw.
“Medical?”
“It paid for treatments that never went through company insurance. Specialists. Private clinics. Confidential care.”
Celeste spoke too quickly.
“Exactly. Your father was ill. I helped manage expenses.”
Anthony turned on her.
“You were never authorized on that trust.”
“I didn’t say I was.”
“Then why is your company receiving sixty thousand dollars from it?”
“I don’t know.”
Vincent shut the ledger.
“No more talking here.”
He looked at Mrs. Dalca.
“Get a doctor for Grace.”
“I’m fine.”
“No.”
His eyes moved to my bleeding bandages.
“You are very obviously not fine.”
“I need to tell you something else.”
Celeste’s breathing changed.
Vincent caught it.
“What?”
I reached into the small pocket sewn inside my apron.
My fingers hurt so badly I nearly dropped what I was holding.
A key.
Old brass.
Small enough for a desk drawer.
Vincent stared.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your father’s accounting room.”
Celeste lunged.
She moved faster than I expected.
Her hand closed around my wrist.
Pain flashed white through my arm.
I gasped.
Vincent caught her before she could take the key.
He pulled her away from me.
“Enough.”
“I was stopping her from stealing again!”
I looked at him.
“The key was taped under the ledger.”
Celeste struggled against his grip.
“Vincent, listen to me.”
I continued.
“Behind it was a note.”
His eyes locked on mine.
“What note?”
I swallowed.
“I didn’t have time to take it.”
“Where is it?”
“Still in the accounting room.”
“What did it say?”
I could feel everyone listening.
Even the rain seemed quieter.
“Three words.”
Vincent waited.
I said them.
“ASK ABOUT ELEANOR.”
Anthony’s face changed.
Marianne covered her mouth.
Matteo looked completely lost.
Vincent did not.
He stared at me like I had opened a grave.
Then he slowly looked at his uncle.
“Who is Eleanor?”
Anthony whispered, “Your mother.”
I stopped breathing.
Vincent’s mother had died when he was seven.
That was what everyone knew.
A car accident.
A funeral.
A marble stone in the Romano family cemetery.
Vincent’s eyes turned back to the brass key in my hand.
Then to Celeste.
She had stopped struggling.
And that frightened me most.
Because guilty people argued.
Cornered people screamed.
Celeste suddenly looked calm.
Too calm.
Vincent saw it too.
“What do you know about my mother?”
She smiled.
It was small.
Tired.
Almost pitying.
“More than your father ever told you.”
Thunder cracked above the house.
The lights flickered.
Once.
Twice.
Then went out.
Someone screamed.
Glass shattered.
The room dropped into darkness.
I heard a chair overturn.
Heavy footsteps.
Then Celeste’s voice.
Very close to me.
“Run, Grace.”
Something struck my shoulder.
I hit the floor.
By the time the emergency lights turned red—
May you like
Celeste was gone.
And so was the key.
