Semua Bab SHATTERED CROWNS: Bab 21 - Bab 30

Seraphina landed at Heathrow on a Tuesday morning in a thin London rain.Luna was asleep in her car seat by the time they got back to the house in Notting Hill. The nanny carried her upstairs. Seraphina stood in the foyer with her coat still on and her suitcase still by the door and listened to the house breathe around her.Home.She had forgotten what the word meant for a while there.She walked through the ground floor without turning on the lights. Kitchen. Sitting room. The sunroom where she sometimes sketched designs at four in the morning when she could not sleep. The shelf with Luna's books. The framed photograph on the mantle of Luna on her second birthday, face smeared with cake.She stopped in front of the photograph.In the photograph, Luna was laughing at something off camera. Her eyes were enormous. Wide. Dark brown. His eyes.Seraphina had stared at that photograph a thousand times without letting herself see it. Now that Damien had stood ten feet from her daughter and c

Seraphina was making Luna pasta when the doorbell rang at 8:47 p.m. London time.Luna was sitting at the kitchen island in her dinosaur pyjamas, colouring a picture of a cow with a purple crayon. She had declared the cow's name was Margaret. She had also declared that Margaret was going to marry a tractor. Seraphina had not argued.The doorbell rang again."Who is at the door, Mummy?""I do not know, baby. Stay here. Colour Margaret's wedding dress.""Margaret is a cow, Mummy. Cows do not wear dresses.""Fair point."Seraphina walked to the front door. Looked through the peephole.She stopped breathing.Damien. On her front step. In a coat. His hair was wet from the rain that had not stopped since she had landed. His face was tight with something that was not good news.She opened the door three inches and kept the chain on."What are you doing here?""I have to talk to you.""I told you not to come to my house.""I know. I know, Aria. I am sorry. This could not wait."Something in hi

Breakfast in a house with a two-year-old was a weapon.Damien arrived at 8 a.m. sharp, holding a small paper bag of pastries from the bakery down the street. He was wearing a hat. He had not brought flowers because the rules said no flowers.Nanny Rosa opened the door."You are Damien.""Yes.""Luna has been telling me about you.""What has she said?""That you have very cold ears and need to wear a hat. I see you are a fast learner."Damien grinned despite himself.Rosa stepped aside and let him into the foyer."Ms. Kane is in the kitchen. Through there."He walked down the hallway. Luna came barreling around the corner from the opposite direction and crashed into his legs before he even made it to the kitchen."Damien. You came.""I came.""Did you bring a hat."He tapped the hat on his head.Luna nodded approvingly."Good. Mummy says you can have breakfast. There are pancakes. Do you like pancakes?""I love pancakes.""Bacon or no bacon.""Bacon."She took his hand and led him into

Seraphina's phone buzzed at 3:17 a.m.She was not asleep. She had been lying on her back, staring at the ceiling and thinking about Damien in her kitchen and Luna climbing into his lap uninvited. She turned her head to look at the screen.A message from the unknown number.She picked up the phone."You let him into your house. I watched him leave this morning. Were you thinking about me when he kissed you?"The phone nearly slipped out of her hand.Someone had been watching her house. This morning. From outside. Close enough to see Damien leave.She sat up.She called security. The same man answered who had come when she had pressed the panic button two nights ago."I need you here. Now. Tell me you have made progress on the trace.""Ma'am. We are still working on it. The number is routing through a VPN in Estonia. Whoever is sending these knows what they are doing.""They are outside my house. Right now."A pause on the other end."Stay where you are. Lock the nursery door. We have a

In a penthouse apartment on the Avenue Montaigne in Paris, a woman in her early sixties was drinking a small cup of espresso and watching the rain hit the balcony.Her name was Catalina Voss.She was worth four point two billion dollars, give or take a hundred million, and the only person in the world who had ever held her hand had died fifteen years ago.She was watching CCTV footage on her laptop.The footage was two days old. It had been forwarded to her by a private firm she kept on retainer in London. The firm specialized in tracking people who did not want to be tracked. Catalina had used them for twenty-two years to keep track of one person and one person only.The footage on the screen showed a woman in a grey sweater at a kitchen island in a house in Notting Hill, laughing at a small child.Catalina had watched the footage six times already.She had watched the footage twenty-four years ago of the baby being wheeled out of the maternity ward in a New York hospital. She had wa