“I can’t wait until later.” Monica used that energy to go to Jasmine’s side. Her guest – her friend – gawked at her as if she had never seen this side of the woman who once threatened to shoot a man.In front of her, no less.“I have to find Abigailnow.I need to at least know she’s safe. I’ve gotta…” Monica reverted to the casual speak of her youth, back before she trained herself to talk with the vernacular of the elite, the posh, thewealthy.The way she desired to blend in and use rich people to her own ends came back now as a plan formulated in her mind. “I gotta get Abby. I have to find her. Henry’s futilely flying to Nice, and once they know he’s there, they’re gonna tell that bitch to head somewhere else with Abby!MyAbby!”
She rounded the couch, grabbing Eva by the arms. To her credit, Monica’s sister-in-law did not falter, not even when Monica looked up into her face with a mother’s fiery desperation.
“Help me. I can’t do it alone.”
As if she knew what Monica was thinking, Eva embraced her back. “Absolutely.”
“Henrycan’tknow.”
Jasmine peered over the couch.
“Neither can Ethan. No man can know.”
“What?” Jasmine asked.
The very real fear in her eyes alerted Monica that Jasmine was on the same wavelength.
There was more strength in that room than Monica had experienced in her life. More than the last time she ran awayfrom that awful place, with Jasmine hot on her heels, fleeing to safety.
I swear to God…Monica knew this was for nothing. Yet as she clung to Eva for support, she knew what she must do.That bastard…
Ten years. It had been ten years. A thriving business. A marriage. A daughter. Monica’s life was supposed to be one of hilariously entitled comfort as she dealt with her trauma and did her best to prevent it from happening to her daughter. Yet here she was, facing her very realfears,the nightmares that slaughtered her sleep and breathed not a lick of life into her dreams.
Into the lion’s den she went.
Chapter 11
Daniel
Monica asked Eva to drive. They took no one else and told no one where they were going. The only delay was Monica taking a shower and dolling herself up like a robot discovering a wardrobe and makeup for the first time in its electric existence.
She knew exactly what to wear. After all, people didn’t changethatmuch over the years. She still owned many of the same makeup palettes as back then, and why wouldn’t she? They looked good on her. They complemented her wardrobe of blacks, reds, and browns. Her perfume had changed over the years, but she still had some of the old gardenia and sugar that had been her staple for nearly a decade. Just a spritz of it took her back to those golden times of her college years.
She had looked at the woman in her vanity mirror and refused to see the scared woman that shook in her skin. Instead, it was a warrior. Henry’s queen.
He texted her when she was halfway up a mountain, Eva’s Jaguar hugging curves and both of their ears popping.
“I’ve landed in Nice. My people are ready to meet me, and we will go straight to the Beaumonts’ villa. We’re close, Princess.”
She wished him well and mentioned she was finally taking some medication to get to sleep. In truth, she stared at the drizzle of rain that greeted them when they reached a thousand feet above sea level. Some of it would surely turn to ice as the sun went down. Monica and Eva might be stuck for the entire night.
So be it.
Neither of them announced their arrival. They merely followed Monica’s instructions, since she knew this route like she knew the back of her gloved hand. Every few minutes she checked her appearance, touching up her makeup, her hair, whatever was slightly out of place after centripetal force took her around another sharp curve. She inhaled deep breaths that were meant to calm her heart but only fed her mind more fodder for the hours to come.
Think of Daniel. Think how he survived the lion’s den.That was the last Bible story Abigail had been eager to tell her about learning at Sunday school, although Monica swore she had read those stories to her daughter before. Yet Abigail was chuffed as she produced a drawing of a lion she had done under her grandmother’s watch, accompanied by the verse,My God sent the angels, and it shut the mouths of the lions.Quite chilling written in her daughter’s hand, but now Monica understood. She had been meant to see that verse. She did not consider herself a Christian, but it was a powerful idea.
If there was a God, any God, watching out for her and Abigail, the time was now. The time to pray that the lion’s mouth would remain shut.
“I think we’re here.” Eva did her best to keep a steady voice as she pulled down a long, dark driveway. The cloud cover and thecoming twilight did their best to shield the entrance to the giant manor house from the rest of the world, but Monica knew it well. The gate was the same. The trees were the same. Across the road, a marker depicting the site of a fatal car crash two decades ago was the same.This is it.Eva didn’t need her sister-in-law to tell her. She knew where she was.
Home.
She blinked the tears out of her eyes as she thought of it as such. The twenty-something Monica who first came here thought she had walked into a fairy tale. The pink and purple flowers that grew along the driveway in the spring and summer had beguiled her as much as the stately home that rivaled Warren Manor and the Château for signs of long-held prosperity in one family.The Warrens had almost fallen; I bought the Château from a fallen family.Yet this one stood, a testament to having a head for money and the charisma to make everyone kiss your ass.
Monica had fallen for it too. For far too long. Until it was too late…
The Jaguar stopped before the locked gate. When a lone guard emerged from a tiny, heated box, Monica kept her eyes straight ahead while Eva said what they had rehearsed.
