None of it was real. It had never been real.
A sharp knock sounded at the library door.
Captain O’Rourke stepped in, looking slightly uncomfortable. “Mrs. Vance—excuse me, Mrs. Miller. There’s someone at the gate. She refused to leave. She’s on foot.”
I looked at Julian, then back at O’Rourke. “Margaret?”
“No ma'am,” O’Rourke said. “It’s Miss Hale.”
I stood up, smoothed down the front of my dark trousers, and walked toward the window.
Down at the front gates, standing in the cold mist without an umbrella, was Vanessa. She was wearing a trench coat, holding a leather designer tote bag, looking small and desolate against the massive iron scrollwork of the gates.
“Should I have the deputies move her along?” O’Rourke asked.
“No,” I said. “Bring her up to the terrace.”
Ten minutes later, Vanessa Hale was ushered onto the stone terrace outside the library. The rain had picked up again, and her dark hair was plastered to her forehead. She was shivering violently, her lips blue, her expensive leather boots scuffed and wet from the gravel drive.
She didn't look like the woman who had smirked at me from beneath the floral arch the night before. She looked like a drowned rat that had washed up on a marble shore.
“Claire,” she said, her voice shaking with cold.
“Miss Hale,” I said, remaining in the shelter of the portico. “You’re trespassing.”
“I need to talk to you,” she gasped, taking a step toward me, but O’Rourke moved smoothly between us, his massive frame blocking her path. “Please. Just five minutes. Without the lawyers.”
“Anything you have to say to me can be said in front of Captain O’Rourke,” I said. “You have three minutes. Then the gates will be locked.”
Vanessa clutched her tote bag against her chest like a shield. “My father is cutting me off. He’s forcing me to go to a clinic in Switzerland. He said if the paternity test comes back and it isn't Ethan’s, or if it *is* Ethan’s and the federal charges stick, he’ll disown me. He’s going to ruin my life to save his seat in the senate.”
“That sounds like an internal family matter,” I replied, my voice completely flat.
“You have the records!” she cried, tears finally breaking through her mascara, carving black channels down her cheeks. “Your lawyers have Marcus’s phone records. They have the emails between Ethan and my father. If those emails come out, my father will be indicted. He’ll take me down with him, Claire! He’ll tell them I was the one who set up the shell accounts!”
“Were you?”
She hesitated. That split-second pause was all the answer I needed.
“I was doing what Ethan told me to do!” she sobbed. “He promised me we would be married in June! He promised me this house! He told me you were nothing—that you were just a mouse from Connecticut who didn't understand the world he lived in!”
I stepped around O’Rourke. I walked until I was three feet from her. I looked into her wet, terrified eyes.
“I am not a mouse, Vanessa,” I said softly. “I was the architect who kept the roof over his head while he was stealing from the foundation. You thought you were stepping into a palace, but you were just moving into a condemned building.”
“Please,” she whispered, dropping to her knees on the cold, wet flagstones of the terrace. “Help me. Just give me the file on my father. Don't send it to the US Attorney. If you hold that file back, my father can negotiate a plea. He won't destroy me.”
I looked down at her.
Twenty-four hours ago, this woman had stood on my ballroom floor, with my husband’s arm around her, smiling while my life was being dismantled for the entertainment of two hundred strangers. She had felt no pity for the woman whose home she was taking. She had felt no remorse for the seven years of grief she was trampling over.
“Julian,” I called out through the open French doors.
Julian appeared in the doorway, pen in hand.
“Deliver the Hale files to the Southern District with the rest of the Whitmore materials,” I said, not taking my eyes off Vanessa. “Make sure the courier departs before five o'clock.”
“Consider it done,” Julian said, retreating into the library.
Vanessa let out a choked, guttural scream of despair, burying her face in the wet stone. “Why? Why are you doing this to me? I didn't do anything to you! Ethan was the one who cheated! Ethan was the one who lied!”
“You knew who he was, Vanessa,” I said as I turned back toward the warmth of the house. “You just thought that as long as you were the one holding the leash, the dog wouldn't bite you.”
I looked at O’Rourke. “Call a car to take her to the train station. She shouldn't be on the road in this weather.”
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