Of All the Fake Heiresses I've Met, You're the Stupidest novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Two Families Before This One
Chester paints Erin as a serial impostor and the envoys remember. Sean sets a DNA test for Thursday and gives her a guard. A tattooist arrives asking Savannah to pay.
Chester did not run.
That was the first thing I noticed, and it was the thing I should have expected.
In twenty-six years I had never seen him run from anything.
He took his time putting his cap back on.
"Savannah is overwrought, Sean," he said. "She's had a shock. I never drew anything on anybody."
"You told me where the mark goes!" Savannah cried.
"I told you a story about the Kearney mark, sweetheart. Stories get mixed up."
He said it so gently that two people at the nearest table nodded.
Then he turned to me, and his eyes were kind.
"I'm sorry, kid. I'm going to have to say it, for the family's sake."
My stomach went tight.
"This girl has been claimed twice before," Chester said to the pier. "By the Benedetti family, and then by the Orlov family. Both times a fake heiress was standing right beside her. Anyone here want to tell me those were coincidences?"
He looked at the two envoys.
The Benedetti envoy lowered his phone.
"It is true," he said. "Her name is in our file on the Benedetti girl."
"And in ours," said the Orlov man in gray. "Our missing girl was last seen with her."
A murmur ran down both tables.
"A girl who collects families," Chester said sadly. "I'm sorry. I wanted to protect her. I couldn't."
Every face on the pier was against me.
That is how a room turns.
It takes about three sentences.
I put one hand flat on the tablecloth, and I used my plainest voice.
"The Benedetti girl wanted me to take a trafficking charge for her," I said. "She has life in federal prison without parole."
The Benedetti envoy's mouth closed.
"The Orlov girl got down on her knees and swore she would not compete with me," I said. "Then she paid a man to kill me."
I looked at the Orlov envoy.
"She is at the bottom of the harbor with the money. You looked for her for a month. You know where she is now."
The Orlov man in gray went white.
"Both of them were fake," I said. "I was never the fake, and I never asked either family for anything."
Nobody spoke.
"What I wanted," I said, "was somebody who wrote me a letter."
I looked at Sean Kearney.
He was still holding the edge of the table.
His eyes were wet.
"Chester," he said, without turning his head. "You put your hands on my table for twenty years. You never said a word about my daughter."
"I never knew a word to say, Sean."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have."
Sean straightened.
He was a heavy man, and when he straightened, he took up the whole head of the table.
"Here is what happens," he said. "My own lab runs a blood test on both women tomorrow morning. The result comes on Thursday, before the Compact vote. Until then, Erin Calloran sleeps in my house. Savannah sleeps in the guest wing with two men on her door."
"Papa!"
"Ronan guards Erin. Nobody else touches her."
Ronan nodded once.
Chester put on his coat.
"I'll be at the harbor," he said. "I'm only a pilot. Call me if you want me."
He looked at me across the table.
"Good night, kid."
His voice was warm.
It was the same warm voice he had used the night I got the letter.
I watched him walk the whole length of the pier, not hurrying, past two hundred guests who made room for him.
I did not feel anything yet.
I knew I would later, and I knew exactly where it would come from.
The staff took Savannah away.
She cried the whole way and kept saying, "It was for flowers."
Ronan walked me up to the house.
It was a big old house of gray stone, and the hall was cold.
He stopped at the foot of the stairs.
"My room is the one next to yours," he said.
"All right."
"Anyone comes for you, they come through me."
"I have terms," I said.
His eyebrow lifted.
"You guard me until Thursday," I said. "That is your job. On the clock, you don't touch me."
He looked at me for a moment.
"On the clock, I don't touch you."
"Not to carry my bag or steady my elbow or anything else."
"Understood."
His voice was even.
His keys moved in his pocket, and the brass casing clicked against them.
I noticed that he did not say he wanted to.
I noticed that I had noticed.
The front doorbell rang.
It rang again, and then again.
Two men in dark jackets stood at the door with their hands on their belts.
On the step stood a short man in a leather vest, with a tattoo gun case in his hand.
His arms were covered in ink to the wrist.
"Evening," he said. "I'm looking for a Ms. P. Kearney. I did a rush job on her last week. She said the family would pay on delivery."
Ronan did not move.
"How much?" he asked.
"Six hundred for the work, and a hundred for the fast turnaround."
He held out a slip.
Ronan took it and read it aloud.
"Crescent, left collarbone. Client says: use reference photo."
He turned the slip over.
A small glossy photograph was clipped to the back.
I saw it, and I stopped where I stood.
It was a close picture of a woman's collarbone.
The strap of a green dress crossed it.
The crescent mark under it was real.
It was my collarbone.
It was the dress I had worn to Chester's birthday last spring.
Chester had taken the picture himself, across the table, and told me to hold still because I had food on my cheek.
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