Chapter 6 - THE GIRL IN THE GREENHOUSE
My breath caught in my throat.
I looked up the grand marble staircase toward the third-floor landing, then back at Judge Cross pinned against the mahogany paneling.
"That's impossible," I said immediately. "I clean every room on the third floor. The only people living up there are me, Mrs. Gable the housekeeper, and—"
I stopped dead.
Four months ago, right after Vivienne moved her wardrobe into the east wing and took over household management, she had hired a live-in laundress to handle the fine linens in the basement laundry room and the adjoining conservatory greenhouse.
A quiet Polish woman named Marta.
And Marta had an eight-year-old niece who had suffered a severe throat injury in a car accident as a toddler and couldn't speak above a whisper.
A little girl with dark curls who wore thick glasses, stayed strictly in the back garden and the laundry wing, and had strict orders from Vivienne never to come near the main house during the day because "Mr. Valenti didn't allow staff children inside the residence."
"Lilly?" Noah whispered beside me.
I looked down at him in shock. "You know her?"
Noah's small face had gone white beneath his freckles. "I saw her through the glass door of the greenhouse last Tuesday when I lost my soccer ball in the bushes. She pushed the ball back to me. She had a bandage wrapped around her left wrist."
Vivienne covered her face with both hands, sinking onto the bottom step of the marble staircase.
"I found out four months ago when I went through my father's safe," Vivienne wept, her carefully pinned hair finally coming loose around her shoulders. "He had placed Zoe with a former court bailiff's sister on the south side after Clara died. When the woman got sick this past summer, my father panicked that social services would take Zoe back and run her fingerprints or birth records through the state database—which your investigators have flagged, Damian!"
Damian slowly released Judge Cross's collar, though he stood close enough that the older man couldn't take a step sideways.
"So you brought my brother's daughter into my own house," Damian said, his voice shaking with a fury so deep it made the air feel heavy. "And put her in the basement laundry wing while I sat at that table every night promising Noah I wouldn't rest until I found his sister."
"What was I supposed to do?!" Vivienne looked up at him, her mascara streaking down her cheeks. "If I told you the truth four months ago, you would have found out my father took money from old Lorenzo the night Marco died! You would have ruined our family, called off the merger, and destroyed my father! I brought her here so she would be safe, warm, and fed until after our wedding!"
"And tonight?" I asked, my voice trembling with anger as I stepped forward. "You tried to force me to cut Noah's bracelet off with kitchen scissors because you were terrified that if Noah and Lilly ever got close enough in the garden to see each other's wrists, they would recognize each other!"
Vivienne didn't deny it. She couldn't.
"She changed so much in two years," Vivienne whispered miserably. "When she was six, she had long hair and didn't wear glasses. My father told her that if she ever spoke to the boy in the main house, the men who hurt her father would come back and put Noah in a detention center. The child kept quiet to protect her brother!"
Noah didn't wait for another word.
He tore his hand out of mine, spun on his heel, and bolted back through the dining room toward the rear hallway that led to the conservatory greenhouse.
"Noah!" Damian roared, already sprinting after him.
I lifted my long black skirt with both hands and ran right behind Damian, past the twenty-four stunned engagement guests who were now standing around the banquet table in complete chaos.
We burst through the back service corridor. The air immediately turned warm and humid, smelling of damp earth, lemon trees, and laundry soap.
At the end of the brick passageway stood the glass-paned doors of the conservatory, where the household linens were hung to dry beside rows of potted orchids during the winter months.
A single amber work lamp was burning inside.
Standing beside a wicker laundry basket was Marta, the fifty-year-old woman Vivienne had hired, her face pale with alarm. And standing just behind her, wearing a faded flannel nightgown two sizes too big and thick wire-rimmed glasses, was a small girl of eight with cropped dark curls.
Noah skidded to a halt just inside the glass doorway.
His chest was heaving. The little girl shrank back behind Marta's skirt, clutching her left wrist against her collarbone—the exact same protective gesture Noah had made at the dining table twenty minutes ago.
"Don't come near her!" Marta said sharply in accented English, stepping in front of the child. "Judge Cross said nobody from the main house is allowed back here! If the boy talks to her, they take him away!"
Damian stepped past Noah, his massive shoulders filling the narrow greenhouse doorway.
"Step aside, ma'am," Damian said, and though his voice was quiet, Marta took one look at his eyes and backed against the potting table.
Noah didn't run at the little girl.
He remembered what she was afraid of.
Instead, the ten-year-old boy dropped onto his knees on the damp brick floor, six feet away from her, so he looked smaller.
With shaking fingers, he reached up to his own face and pretended to push up a pair of invisible glasses, then tapped the tip of his nose twice.
It was a silly, childish gesture.
The little girl behind Marta froze.
"Zoe?" Noah whispered, his voice cracking. "It's okay. Nobody's gonna take me away. Look."
He held out his left wrist under the warm yellow light of the work lamp.
The faded red cord. The three tight fisherman's knots. The tiny wooden bead with the scratched letter Z.
The little girl reached up with her right hand and pulled off the thick wire-rimmed glasses. Without them, her eyes weren't squinted at all—they were wide, clear hazel, identical to Noah's and identical to the woman in the silver pocket watch.
The glasses were plain window glass. Judge Cross had made her wear them to hide her face.
"Noah?" she breathed. Her voice wasn't damaged from a car accident. She had been healthy the whole time.
She tore across the four feet of brick floor and threw her arms around her brother's neck so hard they both tumbled back against a sack of potting soil.
Noah buried his face in her cropped curls, sobbing openly as he held onto her flannel sleeves like he would never let go again. "I looked everywhere for you! Mr. Damian and I looked everywhere!"
I pressed the back of my hand against my mouth, tears spilling hot down my cheeks as Damian dropped to one knee beside the two children, his tattooed hand resting gently on the back of both their heads.
Then Marta spoke from the corner, her voice shaking with terror.
"Mr. Valenti... if you are their uncle, you need to lock the front gates right now."
Damian looked up sharply. "Why?"
May you like
Marta pointed toward the small wooden wardrobe in the corner of the laundry room.
"Because Judge Cross didn't take money from your father Lorenzo seven years ago," she said, pulling an old, water-stained navy wool pea coat with brass buttons from the wardrobe. "Look at the slit in the back of Marco Valenti's boat coat. Judge Cross was on the harbor dock the night your brother's boat went down—and ten minutes ago, he called the second man who was with him to come pick up the girl before dinner ended."
