Semua Bab SHATTERED CROWNS: Bab 31 - Bab 40

Damien crossed the lobby with his hands in his coat pockets and his eyes on the woman by the window.She was sitting in a green velvet armchair with the morning paper folded across her knee, a small espresso cup balanced on the side table beside her. She looked up before he was halfway across the room. Her gaze landed on him, and held.Pale grey eyes. Sharp cheekbones. Silver hair cut into a precise bob. A face that had been beautiful once and was now something more interesting than beautiful, which was striking. She was perhaps sixty five. She did not stand. She did not smile. She watched him approach the way a chess player watches an opponent's hand move toward a piece."Mr. Cross."She knew him.He stopped two paces from her chair."You have me at a disadvantage.""I doubt that very much."He registered the accent. Not Italian, not Spanish. Something further north. Possibly Swiss. Possibly Belgian. Old money, whichever it was."You asked the doorman for Aria. Why.""Because I would

The file arrived by courier at ten thirty.It came in a black leather portfolio with no markings on the outside. The courier was a young man in a dark suit who handed it directly to Damien at the door, did not speak a word, and left in a black sedan that had been idling in the street.Seraphina was in the sitting room. Luna was upstairs with Rosa, having a late breakfast and being deliberately kept far from any conversation that might carry through the walls. Seraphina had asked Damien to stay. He had agreed without asking why.He set the portfolio on the coffee table in front of her.She did not open it for a long moment. She just looked at the surface of the leather. The texture. The weight of it. It was thicker than a normal file. Thirty one years of attention reduced to whatever could fit between two leather covers."Aria.""Give me a minute."He gave her a minute. Then another. He did not move from the chair across from her. He had brewed coffee. He had brought her a cup. He had

Seraphina arrived at Claridge's at four in the afternoon.She wore black. A simple sheath dress, low heels, a long coat. Her hair was in a low knot. She had told herself, when she dressed, that she was wearing black because it was practical. She had stopped telling herself that on the cab ride over and admitted, only to the inside of her own head, that black was the color she had chosen because she did not know how to dress for meeting one's mother for the first time.Damien was with her. He had not asked to come. She had asked him.In the lobby he touched her elbow. Lightly."Do you want me upstairs or down here."She thought about it."Down here. I will text you when I want you.""I will be in the bar.""Damien.""Yes.""Thank you."He did not answer. He squeezed her elbow once and walked toward the bar.She rode the elevator alone to the fourth floor. She found room four oh two. She raised her hand and stood with it suspended in the air for what felt like a long time, and then she

Rose Taylor stood across the street from Claridge's at midnight and watched the lit windows of the eighth floor.She was wearing a black coat. Her dark hair was pulled back. She had been standing in the same spot for two hours. The doormen had noticed her once. They would notice her again if she did not move soon. London hotels watched the street more carefully than New York ones. She had learned that the hard way last week.She was holding a phone in her gloved hand.On the screen was a photograph of her sister. She had taken the photograph six days ago through the kitchen window of the house in Notting Hill. Aria had been laughing at something Damien had said. Her face had been turned slightly toward the camera. She had not known she was being photographed.Rose had been studying the photograph for six days.She did not look like her sister. She had thought, when Catalina had first told her about Aria four years ago, that twins were supposed to look alike. Hers did not. Aria had gro

Damien stayed in London for four more days.He moved out of the hotel and into the guest room of Aria's house at her invitation. He did not push for the master bedroom. He did not push for anything. He read books in the sitting room. He took Luna to the playground twice. He cooked dinner once. He stood in the kitchen and washed the dishes after, and Seraphina watched him from the doorway and tried not to memorize what he looked like in shirtsleeves with his forearms wet.On the fourth day, his phone rang at six in the morning.Nathan."Damien. I have a name."Damien sat up."Tell me.""The woman in the Target footage. The prepaid card. The VPN. We pulled her from a different angle in the parking lot and ran face match against the European biometric database. Her name is Rose Taylor. American national. New York birth. Adopted at six months. Four arrests for assault, none convicted. Three psychiatric holds, all voluntary. She has been off the radar for the last eighteen months. She ente