Chapter 18: The Kitchen Door

I told the table I felt faint and walked out through the pantry door.

Nobody stopped me.

I could not stop thinking about the empty safe.

If Leopold had moved the ledger, he had known tonight was coming for days.

I reached the kitchen and stood in the middle of it with my phone in my fist.

Eleven staff in white were plating dessert along a steel counter.

I knew four of them by name, from the Grand.

The head housekeeper was at the end, counting forks, and she did not look up.

"Miss Cora," the pastry cook said.

It was not a question.

He had seen my face in the staff dining room a thousand times, and he knew me the second I came through the door.

"Keep going," I said. "Please. Nobody look at me."

They kept going.

Then the swing door banged, and Quentin came in with his napkin still in his hand.

"Where is she?" he said.

I turned around.

He stood a few feet away with his jaw tight and his eyes going over my face.

"The ring," he said slowly. "Dinah's wearing a four-carat ring and you're sitting at my table without one."

"Quentin."

"You stupid, stupid girl." He said it with something almost like admiration. "Where's your sister? Upstairs? In the study?"

"I don't know what you mean."

He grabbed my wrist.

His fingers were hard, the way they had never been in four years.

"I'm not going to ask again."

"You don't have to," I said. "I'll tell everybody."

I put my phone on the stainless-steel pass-through, thumbed the screen, and turned the volume all the way up.

Keep reading free with an account. Start She Took the Rags, I Took the Empire from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.