The Real Heiress Forgives No One novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Loading Dock

Security takes her bag and the police are called. A stranger pulls her into his car and says her twin has collapsed.

The guards walked me through the kitchen and out onto the loading dock.

It was March, and the cold hit my bare arms.

One of them held my elbow. The other one held my bag.

"That's mine," I said, and reached for it.

He lifted it out of my reach and unzipped it right there under the dock light.

My phone went into his pocket. My wallet went to the other guard.

Then he found the small plastic bag at the bottom, the one I'd carried against my skin for eighteen years.

Inside it was a child's hospital bracelet, gone yellow, with a name printed on the paper strip.

"Give me that," I said. My voice cracked on it.

"Mr. Sedgwick's instructions," he said. "Nothing leaves with her."

He tucked the bracelet into his jacket, and I lunged for him.

The other guard caught me and pinned my arm behind my back.

I kicked a dumpster so hard that the whole thing rang.

A man's voice came from the dark end of the dock, low and dry.

"Is she under arrest, or is this a hobby?"

Both guards turned.

A tall man in a black suit with no tie was leaning on the loading rail.

He was maybe thirty-three, broad through the shoulders, with short black hair and a face that looked bored on purpose.

"Mr. Keyes," the guard said, and let go of my arm a little. "Mr. Sedgwick wants her held for the police."

"For what?"

"Trespassing. Disturbing an event."

"She was working the event," the man said. "I watched her carry champagne for forty minutes before she took the stage."

He took one slow step closer. "That makes her an employee with strong opinions."

The guard shifted his weight. "Sir, it's family business."

"It's a board member's hotel," the man said. "Anson Keyes. Thirty-one percent. Hand her bag and her bracelet back."

The guard went still. "What bracelet?"

"The one in your left pocket," Anson said. "I saw you take it. I see well in the dark."

The guard looked at his partner, and neither of them moved.

Behind us the kitchen door banged open.

Preston Sedgwick came out in a tuxedo, with a gold watch on his wrist and silver hair brushed back off his forehead.

I knew him at once. I had not seen him in eighteen years, and I knew him at once.

He did not look at me. He looked at the guard.

"I told you nothing leaves with her," he said. "The police are two minutes out."

"She is a disturbed person who has been stalking my family."

"Stalking you," I said, "from your own stage."

He finally turned his head, and his eyes went over my face slowly, from my hairline to my chin.

Something moved in them and was gone.

"I don't know you," he said.

"You carried me to the car," I said. "I had a hospital gown on. You told me to be brave."

His jaw flexed, just once. "Take her bag and her phone to the front desk. Hold her until they arrive."

"Preston," Anson said mildly, "if you touch her property again, I'll call a board vote on Monday."

"On what grounds?"

"I haven't decided. I'll find some."

The two men looked at each other under the dock light.

Preston's voice dropped. "You have no idea what you're protecting."

"No," Anson said. "I'd like to learn."

Sirens turned in from the road at the end of the drive.

Preston went inside without another word.

The guard sighed, took the bracelet out of his jacket, looked at it, and then handed it to me.

I did not understand why, and then I saw Anson watching him with a flat, patient stare.

I shoved it into my bra and grabbed my bag and wallet from the guards.

"Come on," Anson said.

"I don't know you."

"No. But the police do, and they like me better than they'll like you."

He opened the back door of a long black car. "Get in, Wynne."

He said my real name as if it were an ordinary one.

I got in.

The car pulled out through the service gate while the patrol cars came up the front drive.

For the first time that night my hands started to shake.

Anson said nothing for a full minute, and I liked him a little for it.

Then he said, "Your sister collapsed on the stage about ten minutes after they dragged you out."

I stared at him.

"Your father didn't call an ambulance. He had her carried to a car and driven to the family's private clinic."

He looked at me in the mirror, and his eyes were very steady.

"Ask yourself why a man would do that, when she's got your kidney in her."

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