Chapter 8

The Accident No One Talked About

Margaux Voss answered her own door at one in the morning, wrapped in a silk robe, silver hair still perfectly in place, looking far too composed for a woman who'd just been woken by her grandson pounding on her front door.

"Well," she said, taking in the two of them standing on her doorstep. Vivienne was pale and shaking, Damian gripping a folder like it might explode. "This is either a very late engagement announcement or something has gone terribly wrong. Come in. I'll make tea. Something tells me we're going to need it."

They sat in her sitting room, the old photograph laid out on the coffee table between them, and Vivienne watched Margaux's face carefully as the old woman studied it. Something shifted behind her sharp eyes: recognition, and beneath it, old grief that had never quite finished healing.

Where did you get this? Margaux asked quietly.

"Someone sent it to Vivienne tonight," Damian said. "Along with a message asking what my uncle was about to tell someone the week before the accident." He leaned forward. "Grandmother. I need you to tell me the truth. Was it really an accident?"

Margaux set down her teacup with a hand that trembled, just slightly, for the first time all night.

"I never believed it was," she said finally. "I told the police as much. They looked at me like I was a grieving old woman who couldn't accept a wet road and bad luck. She closed her eyes briefly. "Your uncle called me the morning of the accident. He said he'd found something in the company's old records, something involving a land deal from years before, something he said changed everything about how the company started. He said he was meeting someone that afternoon to discuss it. He never told me who.

"Weston Hale," Damian said grimly.

"I don't know," Margaux admitted. I never had proof. I only had a phone call and a bad feeling, and a family lawyer at the time who told me pursuing it publicly would tear the company apart on nothing but suspicion. Her eyes hardened. I let it go. I have regretted that every year since.

Vivienne spoke up carefully. "Mrs. Voss, do you know why my father was in that photograph? Standing near your son, next to Weston Hale?"

Margaux studied her for a long moment, something almost sorrowful crossing her face. What was your father's name, dear?

"Thomas Marsh."

Margaux went very still.

I remember that name, she said slowly. Not well. But I remember it. Your father did restoration work for this family, years before you were born, long before you'd have been old enough to know. He worked on a set of old land deeds my late husband kept in the estate archive. Original documents. Very old, very fragile." She frowned, reaching back through decades of memory. "There was some kind of dispute over them, I believe. My husband and Weston Hale's father were partners once, before I ever married into this family. It ended badly. I never learned the details, men in this family have always been very good at deciding what their wives don't need to know."

A land dispute, Damian repeated slowly. Between our families. Going back that far. If Thomas Marsh restored the original documents, Vivienne said, thinking out loud, piecing it together as she spoke, then he would have seen exactly what was in them. Whatever the two families were fighting over, my father might have known the truth of it, decades before any of us were born. And eleven years ago, Damian said, his voice going hollow, my uncle found something in the company records that changed everything about how the company started, and went to meet someone about it the same day he died. He looked at Vivienne, dread creeping into his expression. "If your father restored the original documents that proved whatever my uncle found.

Then my father wasn't just some contractor who happened to go into debt, Vivienne finished, her voice barely a whisper. He might have been the one person alive who actually knew the truth.

The room fell into heavy silence. Is your father's death. Margaux started carefully.

"A stroke," Vivienne said quickly. "Two years ago. Alone in his studio. The doctors were very clear about the cause. But even as she said it, a cold seed of doubt planted itself somewhere deep in her chest, one she hated herself for even considering. It was natural. It has to have been natural.

Nobody in the room looked entirely convinced, including Vivienne herself.

Damian drove her home just before dawn, the city gray and quiet around them, both of them wrung out from a night that had rearranged everything they thought they knew about how their lives had collided.

"I keep thinking about it from a different angle," Vivienne said, staring out the window. "What if this was never really about you and your family's company at all? What if the real secret was always about whatever those old land documents said and both our families just happen to be tangled up in the fallout, generations later, without ever choosing to be?"

"Either way," Damian said, someone's been planning this a very long time. Long enough to arrange your father's loan. Long enough to know exactly when my deadline was coming. Long enough to already have Sabrina in place before I'd even picked which woman I'd offer that contract to. His hands tightened on the wheel. That kind of patience terrifies me more than anything Étienne's ever done.

They pulled up outside her studio just as the sky was turning pale gold at the edges. Damian walked her to the door, the early morning quiet settling around them like a held breath. I want you to have security here, he said. Starting today. Not a suggestion.

"Damian"

"Vivienne." His voice cracked slightly, just enough for her to hear how frightened he actually was underneath the careful control. "Someone photographed my uncle's last afternoon alive and sent it to my wife at midnight as a warning. I am not taking chances with you. Not after everything else this week."

She softened, reaching up to touch his face, exhaustion and fear and something warmer all tangled together in her chest.

"Okay," she said quietly. "Security. But you have to promise me something too."

"Anything."

"Don't shut me out of this," she said. "I know you're used to handling danger alone, the way you've handled everything alone since your uncle died. But this isn't just your family's secret anymore. It's mine too now. Whatever we find, we find it together."

Something in his face softened completely, all the careful walls dropping away at once, and he kissed her gently, once, at her own front door in the pale morning light, like a promise instead of a question this time.

"Together," he agreed.

He was still standing on her doorstep when Reyes's car pulled up sharply behind them, tires screeching against the curb. The security chief got out fast, his face grim in a way that made Vivienne's stomach drop instantly.

"Sir. You need to see this."

He held out his phone. On the screen was a live news alert, the headline still loading.

BREAKING: FIRE REPORTED AT MARSH RESTORATION STUDIO — SOHO — FDNY ON SCENE.

Vivienne's whole body went cold.

"That's not possible," she whispered, turning to look back at her own building dark windows, quiet street, no smoke, nothing wrong at all. "I'm standing right here. My studio is fine."

Reyes's expression didn't change. "This alert went out four minutes ago. Location tagged to your address." He looked past her, toward the studio's dark windows, and something in his stillness made the hair on the back of Vivienne's neck rise.

"Someone wants people to believe your studio is burning down right now," he said quietly. "Which means somebody's already watching you closely enough to know exactly where you are and exactly how to make the whole world think something happened to you before anyone thinks to actually check."

Behind them, down the block, a black sedan idled at the corner that hadn't been there five minutes ago.

As they watched, its headlights switched off.