CHAPTER 9 - USEFUL LIES

POV: Anne

Anne Phillips had learned early that truth was only useful when timed correctly.

Too soon, and it made enemies. Too late, and it became evidence.

She sat in Mary Elsner’s drawing room with her knees pressed together, hands folded, smile arranged. The room smelled of white roses and money. Everything in it looked innocent because Mary liked innocence best when it was expensive and impossible to prove.

Mary stood at the window, black silk falling perfectly from her shoulders. From a distance, she looked like a grieving widow. Up close, she looked tired enough to be believable. That was what made her dangerous. She never asked the world to adore her when pity would work better.

—Lisa Hasse is speaking to Lucas Lawson, Mary said.

Anne’s nails bit into her palm.

—Professionally?

Mary turned. Her eyes were damp, but not weak.

—Is that the word you prefer?

Anne hated that she blushed.

She had loved Ethan since before loving him was humiliating. At sixteen, she had loved the way he ignored a room full of girls trying to impress him. At nineteen, she had loved that he could enter a party and make every man seem unfinished. At twenty-three, she loved him with the exhausted fury of someone who had waited too long to stop.

Lisa had never waited.

Lisa had simply been chosen.

—I do not see how Lucas Lawson matters, Anne said.

Mary crossed the room slowly and sat across from her. She did not raise her voice. She never needed to.

—He matters because he gives Lisa legitimacy. A grieving ex-fiancee is unstable. A law student advised by Lucas Lawson becomes a symbol. Symbols are harder to destroy.

Anne looked down.

—Maybe Lisa is only trying to help her father.

For one second, Mary’s face changed. Not anger. Something colder.

Then it was gone.

—Of course she is, Mary said softly.

—A daughter’s loyalty can be beautiful. It can also be reckless.

That was how Mary did it. She made cruelty sound like concern. She put a ribbon around a threat and handed it over as advice.

—What do you want me to do? Anne asked.

—Nothing dramatic. Ethan distrusts drama.

Mary reached for the teacup beside her and did not drink.

—Be visible with him. Let people remember that he is not alone. If Lisa approaches him, you tell me. If Camille Torres approaches anyone in the press, you tell me. If Lawson offers Lisa a public platform, you tell me before the platform exists.

—So you want me to watch them.

—I want you to protect Ethan from being pulled into the Hasse family’s desperation.

Anne almost believed her.

That was the worst part.

Because Mary had cried at Victor’s funeral. Because Ethan had looked half-dead beside the casket. Because Lisa Hasse had walked through the church with a straight spine and made everyone whisper without saying a word. Because Anne wanted, with a shameful intensity, to be the woman Ethan looked for when the room became too much.

Mary leaned closer.

—You love him.

Anne’s throat tightened.

—That is not a crime, Mary continued.

—But silence can become one if it protects the wrong person.

The words landed too precisely.

Anne thought of her father. Conrad, pale and sweating in his study the morning after Victor died. Conrad snapping a drawer shut when she entered. Conrad telling her, too loudly, that grief made people imagine patterns.

—My father has been strange, Anne said before she could swallow the sentence.

Mary’s fingers stopped on the rim of the cup.

Only for a second.

—Conrad has always been strange.

—This is different.

—Different how?

Anne should have stopped. She knew that. But jealousy makes people reckless, and fear makes them stupid.

—He destroyed a phone SIM card. I saw him.

Mary’s expression softened. Anyone watching from the doorway would have thought she was comforting a younger woman.

—Then you should stay away from his study.

Anne went still.

—Why?

—Because men like your father panic when they feel cornered. And panic is unclean.

It was not an answer. It was a warning.

Anne stood.

—I should go.

Mary rose with her and kissed both her cheeks. Her perfume was delicate, expensive, and suffocating.

—Dinner tonight, Mary said.

—Wear blue. Ethan always looked calm beside blue.

Anne left the drawing room with her pulse beating at the base of her throat.

In the foyer, her phone vibrated.

Unknown number.

She opened the message.

Tell Mary your father kept Victor’s last object, and you will bury him before Lisa does.

Anne read it twice.

Then a second message arrived.

Do not tell Mary, and you might survive both of them.

Anne looked back toward the drawing room doors. Behind them, Mary Elsner was probably pouring tea with hands that never shook.

For the first time, Anne wondered whether she had been helping a grieving mother.

Or feeding herself to a wolf.