Chapter 2
I closed the penthouse doors.
Nobody left.
Claire sat on the hallway bench with her hands clenched together while Gavin remained standing near the bedroom entrance. He had buttoned his shirt badly, one button misaligned with the next.
I noticed because anger makes people look for details.
“You knew about the lake house,” I said.
Gavin stared at me.
“You’re my husband.”
“That explains one property.”
I held up the page.
“Explain the others.”
No answer.
Claire whispered, “He said they were family homes.”
I turned toward her.
“And you believed that?”
She laughed nervously.
“I believed a lot of things.”
That sounded less like defense than regret.
Good.
Regret talks eventually.
I placed the documents on the intact end of the console.
“Start with the penthouse.”
Gavin sighed.
“Serena, we were going to explain.”
I looked toward the bedroom.
“At what point?”
His jaw tightened.
“The transfer wasn’t permanent.”
Interesting.
Not fake.
Not misunderstanding.
Not I’ve never seen those documents.
Not permanent.
“So you knew.”
Claire looked sharply at him.
He realized too late.
I stepped closer.
“What did temporary ownership accomplish?”
He said nothing.
One of my bodyguards picked up Gavin’s spare keys from the floor.
Three keys.
There should have been four.
I knew because I gave him the set myself.
I held them up.
“Where’s the brass one?”
Gavin stared.
Claire looked toward the hallway elevator.
There.
I followed her eyes.
The missing key opened a private service lift that descended beneath the building’s public parking levels.
Very few people even knew the lift existed.
My father installed it years ago when Valenti meetings still happened inside this penthouse.
“What did you open downstairs?”
Gavin’s face hardened.
Claire started crying.
He turned toward her.
“Don’t.”
Again.
Always don’t.
Not because she was wrong.
Because she was about to tell me something he feared more than the affair.
I sat across from her.
“Claire.”
She looked at me.
“Why did he need my penthouse in your name?”
Her lips trembled.
Then she whispered:
“Because he said the house had to belong to someone outside Valenti blood before they could open what’s underneath it.”
I felt something cold move through me.
My father’s old reserve chamber was beneath this building.
May you like
I had never told Gavin.
Which meant somebody inside my family had.
