Chapter 2 - The Photograph Behind the Lock
Cassian moved before Adeline could react.
He slipped the photograph inside his jacket and raised one hand toward Matteo.
Matteo stepped beside the door.
The handle turned again.
Locked.
A pause.
Then three soft knocks.
Cassian said nothing.
“Mr. Voss?”
It was Mrs. Bell, the estate’s sixty-three-year-old housekeeper.
Matteo opened the door only after Cassian nodded.
Mrs. Bell entered holding a folded piece of paper.
Her eyes moved from Cassian to Adeline and stopped.
“Oh.”
Cassian studied her.
“You expected someone else?”
“No, sir.”
“You followed us?”
Mrs. Bell shook her head.
“This was delivered through the service entrance.”
She extended the paper.
“No envelope. The driver left before security could stop him.”
Cassian unfolded it.
One line.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LET CAMILLA FINISH.
Adeline read it over his shoulder.
Her face went white.
Cassian folded the note once.
“Matteo.”
“Already on it.”
Matteo left.
Mrs. Bell looked toward Adeline.
“Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay.”
The older woman saw the torn sleeve.
“You’re not.”
Adeline tried to smile.
It failed.
Mrs. Bell had been the person who hired her.
Three weeks earlier, Adeline had walked into the estate carrying two references and wearing shoes she had polished twice because she could not afford a new pair.
Mrs. Bell had interviewed her for fifteen minutes.
Then hired her.
At the time, Adeline assumed she had been lucky.
Now she wondered whether luck had anything to do with it.
“Mrs. Bell,” Cassian said, “why did you hire her?”
The housekeeper stiffened.
“Her references were good.”
“How many applicants?”
“Fourteen.”
“Why Adeline?”
Mrs. Bell looked at the young woman.
“Because she needed the position.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s mine.”
Cassian’s voice remained calm.
“When did you first hear the name Elena Croft?”
Mrs. Bell’s face changed.
Adeline saw it.
Cassian did too.
The housekeeper lowered herself into a chair.
“Twenty-six years ago.”
Adeline stopped breathing.
Cassian’s gaze sharpened.
“You knew her.”
Mrs. Bell nodded.
“She worked here before I became head housekeeper.”
“Why did you never tell me?”
“Because your father made everyone promise never to speak her name.”
Cassian’s expression hardened.
“My father made many people promise many things.”
“Yes.”
“And you obeyed.”
Mrs. Bell looked ashamed.
“I was younger.”
Adeline stepped forward.
“What happened to my mother?”
Mrs. Bell’s eyes filled.
Cassian noticed that.
This was not gossip.
This was grief.
“Elena was kind,” Mrs. Bell said. “Too kind for this house back then.”
Cassian said nothing.
He knew what his father had been.
Victor Voss had built his fortune through intimidation, bribery, gambling, unions, construction, and the kind of alliances no prosecutor could ever fully map.
Cassian had inherited the empire at thirty-two.
Then spent twenty years cleaning enough of it to survive in a changing world.
He had never pretended his father was a good man.
“What was Elena’s job?” Adeline asked.
“Accounting assistant.”
“That’s all?”
Mrs. Bell hesitated.
“No.”
Cassian watched her.
“What else?”
“She helped your father organize private ledgers.”
Cassian’s eyebrows rose.
Victor had trusted almost nobody with those books.
Mrs. Bell continued.
“She discovered money was being moved through charities. Large amounts. She thought it was theft.”
“By whom?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have heard something.”
“I heard arguments.”
“Between?”
“Your father and Harrison Ashford.”
Adeline looked toward Cassian.
His face did not change.
Inside, something shifted.
Harrison had known Elena.
And Harrison had access to the camera that failed tonight.
Coincidence had officially become impossible.
Mrs. Bell looked toward the desk.
“Is that where you found it?”
Cassian glanced at her.
“What?”
“The photograph.”
“How did you know there was a photograph?”
Mrs. Bell closed her eyes.
“I put it there.”
Adeline stepped back.
Cassian’s voice grew quieter.
“Explain.”
“Elena gave it to me the night she left.”
“Left where?”
“Chicago.”
“Why?”
“Because she was terrified.”
“Of my father?”
“No.”
Mrs. Bell looked directly at him.
“Of Harrison Ashford.”
The room went still.
Adeline sank into a chair.
She had spent seven months grieving a mother who took secrets into the grave.
Now those secrets seemed to be everywhere.
“What did Harrison do?” she asked.
Mrs. Bell shook her head.
“Elena wouldn’t tell me everything. She said she had discovered something in the private books. Something that could put powerful people in prison.”
Cassian leaned against the desk.
“And my father?”
“She didn’t trust him either. But I think she believed he might protect her.”
“Did he?”
Mrs. Bell looked away.
“No.”
Cassian absorbed that without reaction.
Adeline did not.
“My mother had to run because nobody helped her?”
Mrs. Bell’s voice trembled.
“Yes.”
“And you knew?”
“I knew she left. I didn’t know where.”
“You never looked?”
“I tried.”
“For how long?”
Mrs. Bell said nothing.
Adeline stood.
Cassian watched her struggle between anger and grief.
She handed him his coat.
“I’m leaving.”
“No.”
She turned.
“You don’t get to tell me that.”
“No,” Cassian said. “But whoever sent that note expects you to walk outside alone.”
She froze.
He pointed toward the paper.
“Whoever framed you failed. Camilla failed. Now someone is threatening you.”
“You think staying here is safer?”
“At the moment, yes.”
She laughed bitterly.
“This house is where all of this started.”
Cassian could not argue.
Mrs. Bell stood.
“Adeline, please.”
“Did you know who I was when you hired me?”
The housekeeper hesitated.
That was answer enough.
Adeline’s eyes filled.
“You did.”
“I recognized the surname.”
“You brought me here on purpose.”
“I wanted to know if Elena had ever told you anything.”
“So you used me.”
“No.”
“You put me inside the home of the family my mother told me to run from.”
Mrs. Bell stepped forward.
“I thought Cassian might finally uncover what happened.”
Adeline looked at him.
“Did he ask you to?”
“No.”
“Did anyone?”
Mrs. Bell’s silence returned.
Adeline’s expression hardened.
Cassian moved between them.
“Who contacted you?”
Mrs. Bell looked frightened.
“Two months ago, I received an unsigned letter.”
“What did it say?”
“That Elena’s daughter was living in Chicago.”
“Anything else?”
“It told me where she worked.”
Adeline’s heart pounded.
Her previous job had been at a hotel laundry.
She had quit after management cut her hours.
One week later, she found the Voss estate opening.
“What else?”
Mrs. Bell went to a cabinet.
From behind a stack of linens, she removed an envelope.
Cassian took it.
Inside was a photocopy of Adeline’s employment application from the hotel.
Someone had circled her name.
Below it:
BRING HER HOME.
Adeline whispered, “Home?”
Cassian looked at her.
Nobody spoke.
Then Matteo returned.
“We found the delivery car.”
“And?”
“Stolen plates.”
“Driver?”
“Face covered.”
Cassian handed him the note.
Matteo read it.
“That’s not all,” Matteo said.
He pulled out his phone.
“Security recovered part of the footage from the disabled camera.”
Camilla’s hallway appeared.
8:46 p.m.
A figure in dark clothing moved toward the dressing suite.
The face was hidden from the camera.
But the person carried a rectangular velvet box.
Adeline leaned closer.
The figure entered Camilla’s room.
Two minutes later, emerged without the box.
Cassian paused the video.
“Zoom.”
Matteo enlarged the image.
The person’s right hand was visible.
A gold signet ring.
Ashford family crest.
Cassian’s jaw tightened.
“Harrison.”
Matteo shook his head.
“Maybe.”
“What do you mean?”
“Harrison wears his on the left.”
Cassian stared at the screen.
Camilla wore no signet ring.
But someone else did.
Her younger brother.
Miles Ashford.
Thirty-one.
Charming.
Careless.
Deep in gambling debt.
Cassian had paid off one of those debts after his engagement to Camilla, mostly to avoid scandal.
“Miles was here tonight,” Matteo said.
Cassian remembered seeing him near the bar.
Then he had vanished.
“Find him.”
Matteo nodded.
Adeline stared at the frozen image.
“Why would her brother frame me?”
Cassian looked at the photograph still hidden inside his jacket.
“I don’t think this started with you.”
He removed it.
They examined it beneath the desk lamp.
Elena Croft.
Young Cassian.
Newborn Adeline.
Cassian remembered the day.
Or pieces of it.
Elena had visited the estate shortly after giving birth.
She had begged to see Victor.
Cassian, twenty-nine at the time, found her crying in the garden.
He had held the baby while she spoke to his father.
That was all.
Or so he had believed.
He turned the photograph over again.
The unfinished sentence remained.
IF ANYTHING HAPPENS TO ME, THE CHILD—
The rest had been torn away.
Adeline touched the edge.
“Who tore it?”
Cassian shook his head.
Mrs. Bell whispered, “It wasn’t torn when Elena gave it to me.”
Cassian turned.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
“So somebody found it.”
“And removed the rest.”
Cassian looked at the broken seal on the envelope.
Recently.
Someone had searched this room before them.
Someone had known exactly where to look.
His phone rang.
Matteo answered.
Listened.
His face tightened.
“What?”
He ended the call.
“Security found Miles Ashford’s car.”
“Where?”
“Lower garage.”
“He never left?”
“No.”
Cassian looked toward the hall.
“Search the estate.”
They moved quickly.
Adeline remained beside Mrs. Bell until Cassian turned.
“Stay here.”
She almost argued.
Then thought better of it.
Cassian and Matteo disappeared.
Minutes passed.
Adeline looked at the family photographs.
Victor Voss.
Cassian as a young man.
Men at banquets.
Women whose names she did not know.
Then she noticed one photograph turned slightly toward the wall.
She pulled it free.
Victor Voss stood beside Harrison Ashford.
Between them was Elena.
Behind Elena stood another woman.
Adeline stared.
She knew the face.
Her mother had kept a photograph of that woman in a drawer for years.
Whenever Adeline asked who she was, Elena changed the subject.
Adeline turned the frame over.
Four names were written on the back.
Victor.
Harrison.
Elena.
Margaret.
Mrs. Bell saw it.
Her face drained.
“Where did you get that?”
“Who is Margaret?”
Mrs. Bell stepped back.
“No.”
“Who is she?”
“Put it down.”
“Why?”
“Adeline.”
“Tell me.”
Mrs. Bell covered her mouth.
Before she could answer, a crash sounded somewhere below them.
Then a gunshot.
Adeline jumped.
Mrs. Bell gasped.
Footsteps thundered through the corridor.
Cassian appeared.
“Stay behind me.”
“What happened?”
“We found Miles.”
“Is he hurt?”
Cassian’s face was unreadable.
“He wasn’t alone.”
Matteo appeared behind him holding a man by the arm.
Miles Ashford stumbled into the study.
His tuxedo shirt was untucked.
His face was terrified.
“I didn’t do anything!”
Cassian closed the door.
“You entered Camilla’s room.”
“No.”
“The camera caught your ring.”
Miles looked at his hand.
Panic flashed.
“I was told to.”
“By whom?”
“I can’t tell you.”
Cassian moved closer.
“You can.”
“No.”
“Miles.”
“He’ll kill me.”
Cassian stared at him.
“Who?”
Miles looked toward Adeline.
Then at the photograph in her hand.
His face changed.
“Oh God.”
Cassian noticed.
“You recognize her?”
Miles shook his head.
Cassian grabbed the frame.
“Margaret. Who is she?”
Miles backed into the wall.
“I don’t know.”
“You just reacted.”
“I don’t know her!”
Adeline stepped forward.
“My mother kept her picture.”
Miles looked at her.
And for one terrible second, pity crossed his face.
“Your mother should have told you.”
Adeline’s throat tightened.
“Told me what?”
Miles closed his eyes.
From outside the study came the sound of the front security alarm.
Matteo checked his phone.
“Someone just opened the old east gate.”
“That gate is locked.”
“Not anymore.”
Cassian looked at the security feed.
A black sedan had entered the estate.
It stopped in front of the house.
A woman stepped out.
She was in her late fifties.
Silver-blonde hair.
Dark coat.
Mrs. Bell gripped the edge of the desk.
“No.”
Adeline looked at the screen.
She knew that face from the photograph.
The woman approached the front door.
Then the estate intercom rang.
Cassian answered.
A calm female voice came through.
“My name is Margaret Vale.”
Adeline’s heart stopped.
May you like
The woman continued.
“And if Elena Croft’s daughter is inside that house, she needs to hear what Cassian Voss’s father did to her mother.”
