The last time I saw her, she had stood at the foot of my hospital bed wearing pearls and a cream-colored coat.
“Families survive difficult moments,” she had said, looking not at my bruised face but at the monitors beside me. “But only if wives learn discretion.”
Jason had learned from someone.
He had not invented himself.
Daniel studied my expression. “Iris, do you think Evelyn would help him move records?”
“I think Evelyn would burn down her own house to keep the family portrait clean.”
“Then we need to move quickly.”
I turned toward the street just in time to see Jason’s black car pull away from the curb.
Madison sat in the passenger seat.
She was looking back at me through the rear window.
Her face was unreadable.
That evening, I returned not to the mansion, but to a small furnished apartment Daniel had arranged through a client who owned short-term rentals. It was on the third floor above a bakery, with narrow windows and old radiators that hissed like tired cats. Compared to the mansion’s marble floors and echoing rooms, it should have felt like a fall from grace.
