Nina waved her hand at the men now dispersing through the house. “Let’s go,” she said to Monica. “This way.”
“Where are you going?” Lily’s heels clacked down the stairs, her accent growing thicker as panic settled in. “What is this madness! Stop right there! Guards! Over there! Call the…”
She was blocked by one of Nina’s men, who looked more than ready to lay down some of his own law on the woman who likewise looked as if she recognized him.Let me guess… the son of a certain former maid?This was a family business. Everyone had something to gain from seeing the Beaumonts taken down a peg or two for a while.
The crowd that surrounded Monica directed her down a hallway leading to the back of the house. Nina went ahead, opening a door to a swimming pool in the back.
Monica knew that Lily Beaumont would raise hell for the rest of their lives.Let her.The Beaumonts were no longer tangential acquaintances to the Warrens. Monica would rather scream herself mute than talk to another one of these co-conspirators ever again.
But first, she had to find Abigail. The threat that she might not be there… that they might have been all wrong about this…
“Mom!”
Monica forgot where she was, why she had come to this place, and what might result when the dust settled. Because it didn’tmatter anymore. She heard her daughter’s sweet voice in the humid air.
“Abby!”
She stayed stalwart,calm,as she entered the guesthouse and immediately saw her beloved daughter leaping up from a couch, a chapter book falling from her hand as she flung herself over the arm of the couch, tender blond tresses falling toward the floor.She can’t know… she mustn’t know…How much Monica had panicked – how much she was willing to die if it meant Abigail came home safely and never felt fear or pain again.
So she stood a few feet from her daughter, minding her mien while Abigail hurried to pick up her book and spring to her feet. After she gingerly placed a copy fromThe Saddle Clubseries on a rattan coffee table, she ran up to her mother.
“What are you doing here? Grandma didn’t tell me you were coming.”
While a host of adults huddled outside the entrance, ready to barge in if necessary, Monica stood between them and her daughter. “Just a surprise, honey. Are you having a good time here?”
Monica extended her hand. She almost sobbed from the stress of the past week when Abigail took it and leaped into a front-body hug.
“The best! Oh, my gosh, first we went to France, then we got on the planeagainand… Mom! I can’t breathe!”
Monica’s knees melted toward the floor as she clung to Abigail’s fragile shoulders and inhaled the familiar scent of her daughter’s scalp.I still remember the day I smelled her for the first time…Her own blood. Abigail’s blood. The blood that bound them as mother and daughter, an unbroken line going back to Eve.
“I’m sorry.” She passed her cry of relief off as a delicate sneeze as she loosened her grip on Abigail and patted down herbangs on her forehead. “I just missed you so much this past week. We’ve hardly ever spent this much time apart.” Let alone without Monica’s permission.
One day, she would have to find the words to explain what had happened. How Isabella had kidnapped Abigail with nefarious intentions.“She was never going to let us see each other again until you were married, my darling.”There were too many terrible family lessons to teach such a small child.One step at a time…Right now, all that mattered was that Abigail was safe. Getting them back to Phuket and on a plane to the US as soon as possible was secondary.
Everything else had to come later. When…
Isabella.
The woman stood in the hallway leading back to the bedroom. Monica clutched Abigail’s hand before her daughter could run off to her grandmother, the baleful bitch who reserved only the nastiest of hidden sneers for the woman who dared to interrupt her plans.
“Monica.”
That acknowledgment couldn’t have come with a deeper, more guttural blow to Monica’s gut than if Isabella personally held a gun to the woman threatening God knewhowmany plans.This ends here. Today.
It had been a long time coming. And if Monica had to be the one who split this family in two, well… it had been Isabella’s premonition, hadn’t it?
“Isabella.”
Monica had long learned the subtle art of projecting her authority to those who didn’t believe she had any. For years, she had been the woman cast to the bottom of some hierarchy that only saw her as someone to be chewed up and spat out when her flavor ran foul. If she were to everbe herselfand still keep her head on her neck, then she had to learn subterfuge.Manipulation. Saying the right things to the right kinds of people. How else had she charmed most of the men in her world to hand over thousands of dollars to sleep with women who did it for a living? How else had she convinced tried and true professionals to give her a cut of their earnings? Howelsehad she become the most successful madam who went out of her way to ensure everyone’s happiness while building her tremendous nest egg?
Before, it had been about her survival. Leaving a decade-long relationship that had seen her stripped of her power, her agency meant locking herself up in her Château and forming a new persona for herself. Henry had been the one to release her from her cage. But while most assumed she would be a beautiful, cooing dove…
In reality, he had unfurled a sharp and vengeful hawk upon the world.
So, let this woman named Isabella stand in her way of happiness. Let her think she could shoot this bird of prey out of the sky and pluck her bloody wings from her lifeless body.
Isabella could shoot her, all right. Wound her. Clip her wings and stop her from flying ever again.
