Chapter 13: The Stain

Killian's POV

I drove to Boston with the radio off and both hands on the wheel.

I let myself into the Back Bay house at five in the morning.

I had told the housekeeper not to touch the marble.

The stain had gone brown, and it ran from the foot of the portrait to the telephone table.

I stood at the edge of it and could not walk across.

Mireille's father looked down from the wall, with the white forelock combed back off his forehead.

I had looked at that forelock all my life.

Chantal had shown me the same forelock on a baby in a Milan photograph, and her price was Mireille's divorce, the real bracelet and my public lie.

I had said yes, with my phone recording in my coat pocket.

I had never played the recording.

It held her father's name, his letter, and the amount.

The front door opened behind me.

A cane came across the hall, tapping on the tile.

"I told your driver he would lose his pension again," Constance said. "He is a slow learner."

She stopped beside me and looked down at the stain.

"You kept this."

"Yes."

"It is the first sensible thing you have done in a month."

The housekeeper hurried in from the kitchen with her apron twisted in her fists.

"Mr. Hayes, there is a man on the step with a camera."

"He says Miss Lowell told him you would be here at dawn."

I went cold.

Chantal knew where I was before I did.

"Then she has someone watching this house," Constance said.

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