Chapter 3

I looked down at those few thin sheets of paper and, out of nowhere, I smiled.

Then I lifted my head and looked straight into Milton's eyes. "Milton, are you really so sure the one lying on the ground is my mother?"

Milton narrowed his eyes. "Who else would it be? Who do you think it is?"

"You can have your housekeeper check whether there's a necklace around her neck. It's the gift I gave your mother when we got engaged." I curved my lips into a slow, meaningful smile. "I hope that once you find it, you won't regret this."

Milton went quiet for a moment, and a flicker of unease crossed his eyes. He jerked his chin toward the housekeeper.

The housekeeper nodded and hurried over, bending down with obvious reluctance, feeling along the woman's ruined, bloody neck.

A few seconds later his face changed completely. He scrambled back, a blood-soaked necklace cradled in his palm, his voice shaking. "Mr. Morton... there really is... there's a necklace..."

A fine gold chain, smeared with blood, the pattern I had designed myself engraved on the back.

Genevieve's face shifted. Without thinking, she grabbed at Milton's sleeve, her voice trembling.

"Milt, this... could this really be your mother...?"

"Don't be scared." Milton held her hand tight to steady her, glanced down once, then let out a scornful laugh. "Gayle, I think you really have lost your mind. Have you forgotten? You made two of these back then, identical. One for your mother's neck, one for mine. Now you pull out one of them and try to pass your mother off as mine, so I'll go soft and let her off?"

He shook his head, his tone like he was pitying some raving lunatic. "That little trick of yours only fools yourself."

The moment he finished, the guests reacted like they'd heard the joke of the century, chattering over one another.

"And here I was wondering. Turns out there are two matching necklaces. Gayle didn't actually think that would get her through this, did she?"

"To cover for her own greedy old crone, she'll even drag Mr. Morton's real mother into it. Hopeless."

"No wonder her mother's dead. Stuck with a daughter who lies through her teeth like that, it'd be a miracle if she lived long."

"Mr. Morton better not fall for a cheap trick like this. Gayle will do anything to get what she wants. Women like that are the most dangerous."

I clenched my fists until my nails nearly bit into my palms.

Milton knew there were two necklaces. What he didn't know was that inside each band I had engraved a different letter.

One was marked "M," the other "A."

The one on my mother's neck was engraved with an A.

And right now, the letter inside the one in the housekeeper's hand, I didn't need to look to know.

"Gayle, since you insist on passing your mother off as mine, since you'll stoop to something this low just to squeeze pity out of me, then don't blame me for what comes next." Milton's patience finally ran out. He turned and spoke coldly to the servants behind him. "Go. Bring in the two black dogs tied up at the gate. This wretched, cursed old woman, I'll make a gift of her to them today."

Two of the servants went out at once.

A moment later, two black hunting dogs were led into the banquet hall. They stared at the ruined, bloody body by the pool, low whines rising in their throats.

"Milton!" My head snapped up, my voice tearing itself raw out of my chest. "Do you really have to take it this far?"

"Me, take it too far?" Milton turned to look at me, a bitterly cold curve at the corner of his mouth. "Gayle, from the second you walked through that door, you've been using a dead body to threaten me. You want me to feel guilty? You want to watch me break down in tears? Let me tell you, all of this, you people brought it on yourselves."

He walked toward me slowly, his voice unhurried.

"When your mother was alive, she was like a plaster you couldn't peel off, trading on that scrap of a favor, dropping hints to everyone that Milton Morton only got where he is thanks to her. She liked playing the doting mother, so I had to act it out with her. She liked playing above it all, so I had to let her lecture me about the world. Well, now here she is, lying there, timing her own death to ruin the proudest day of my life."

He stopped in front of me, his gaze dropping down, like he was studying a fish gasping its last.

"And you, along with her, always suffocating me, always pointing your finger, meddling in my life, my work. I've had enough of it long ago. Now that the old woman's dead, maybe you'll finally settle down."

Pain, pain straight to the core, a bitter ache jammed in my throat.

When the company was just starting out, to prop him up I did the work of seven people alone, working through the night until it became routine, and drained as I was, I still made him nourishing soup in whatever spare moments I had.

Back then his eyes were full of feeling, and he promised to love me for the rest of his life. Now he stood there telling me, over and over, that all of it, in his eyes, was just meddling?

I stared at him, my lips trembling, and I couldn't get out a single word.

It was then that a familiar voice came from the doorway.

"Gayle, who died?"