Chapter 4 - a cage of marble
"Helena, explain yourself," Jared said, his voice dangerously level.
A pause dragged on the other end of the line, filled only by the faint hiss of static.
*"Richard called an emergency board meeting for eight o'clock tomorrow morning,"* Helena said, her breathing tight and uneven. *"He claims to have evidence that Julian's trust has been compromised. Jared... if that girl is who I think she is, Richard won't just challenge the trust. He will liquidate everything Julian left behind."*
"Who do you think she is, Helena?" Jared pressed, his dark eyes fixed on Willa.
*"Not over this line,"* Helena snapped. *"Meet me at the brownstone on 74th. Alone."*
The line went dead.
Willa stood frozen by the desk, the silver tag gleaming under the lamp like a loaded weapon. Her head was pounding. "Who is Richard? What trust? Why are these people talking about me like I’m a piece of stolen property?"
Jared didn't answer right away. He picked up the silver tag, turning it over in his calloused fingers. The metal was worn smooth at the edges, carried for years in someone’s pocket before Paulie ever touched it.
"Richard is my cousin," Jared said, his tone grim. "He controls the real estate portfolio of the family. When Julian died ten years ago, he left forty percent of the syndicate's voting shares in a sealed blind trust. The condition was simple: if Julian had no legitimate heirs by the tenth anniversary of his death, the shares would revert to Richard."
Miles checked his watch. "The tenth anniversary is in six days."
Willa let out a dry, incredulous laugh. "You think I'm Julian's daughter? Is that the joke here? Look at me! I grew up eating canned beans in foster homes while you people drank champagne in penthouses! My mother was a seamstress. If she had a secret billionaire husband, she forgot to mention it while she was dying of pneumonia in a county hospital!"
"Your mother didn't have a husband," Jared said quietly. "Julian never married Clara."
The room went dead silent.
Willa felt all the blood drain from her face. The air in her lungs turned to glass.
"What did you just say?" she whispered.
Jared looked at her with an expression she hadn't seen on his face all night: not anger, not suspicion, but a strange, dark solemnity.
"Julian disappeared for six months in 1994," Jared said. "He broke contact with the family. Walked away from the business. When he came back to Manhattan in ninety-five, he was half-starved, quiet, and carried a sketch of a girl named Clara he met in a fabric shop in Astoria. My father threatened to cut him off if he ever saw her again."
Willa’s knees gave out. She caught the edge of the heavy mahogany desk to keep from falling.
*Clara.*
Her mother had kept a small sketchbook locked in the bottom of her sewing kit. It had been filled with charcoal drawings of bridges, ships along the East River, and one portrait of a young man with sharp eyes and an open collar. The signature in the corner had always been rubbed out with an eraser.
"No," Willa said, shaking her head violently. "No. This is insane. You're making this up."
"I don't make up fairy tales, Miss Thornton," Jared said, walking around the desk toward her. "I deal in blood and ledgers."
Before Willa could respond, Miles’s tablet chirped with a high-priority alert.
Miles tapped the screen, his calm facade cracking instantly. "Boss."
"What is it?"
"Silent alarm tripped at Miss Thornton’s apartment in Brooklyn. Two minutes ago."
Willa lunged toward Miles, grabbing his arm. "My cat! Barnaby is in that apartment!"
Miles didn't pull away, but his eyes stayed locked on Jared. "External street cameras show three men in unmarked black tactical gear kicking down the front entrance. They threw an incendiary device through the second-floor window. The building is in flames."
"No!" Willa screamed, turning toward the elevator. "No, no, no!"
Jared caught her by the waist before she could make it three steps.
She fought him with everything she had, scratching at his forearms, kicking against his shins, her voice breaking into raw, desperate sobs. "Let me go! My whole life is in that apartment! Everything I have!"
"Listen to me!" Jared barked, spinning her around and pinning her shoulders against his chest. His grip was iron, immovable, but his voice was steady, cutting through the red haze of her panic. "Your cat is fine. Miles sent a team to secure the perimeter around your block the minute we brought you here. They pulled the animal out twenty minutes ago. He's safe."
Willa stopped struggling, her chest heaving against his suit jacket. Tears tracked hot down her pale cheeks. "You... you had men at my apartment?"
"Of course I did," Jared said, his dark eyes boring into hers. "You think I'm an amateur? The moment I saw your face on those screens, I knew whoever set this up would burn the evidence."
He released her slowly, ensuring she could stand on her own feet.
"They didn't break in to steal your television, Willa," Jared said coldly. "They went there to make sure there was no paper trail left. No photographs. No journals. No birth certificates."
"Why?" Willa whispered, wiping her face with the back of her sleeve. "If Richard wanted the trust, killing me would be enough. Why burn my past?"
Miles looked up from his tablet, his jaw set hard. "Because Richard didn't order the fire, boss."
Jared turned sharply. "What do you mean?"
Miles swiped a live feed onto the study's wall monitor. The footage showed the alley behind Willa's burning Brooklyn apartment building.
A silver Mercedes sedan was idling at the curb, its license plate clearly visible under the streetlamp.
Jared stared at the plate, his knuckles cracking as his hands balled into fists.
"That's not Richard's car," Jared whispered.
May you like
Willa looked at the screen, then at Jared’s suddenly murderous expression. "Whose car is it?"
"Helena Kensington," Jared said, his voice dropping into pure ice. "The woman who just told me to meet her alone."
