Chapter 1 - THE ROOM HER MOTHER WAS NEVER SUPPOSED TO ENTER
“Come with me.”
Damian did not wait to see whether Clara obeyed.
He crossed the kitchen, pushed through the swinging doors, and walked past the dining room without acknowledging the dozen powerful men watching him.
Clara followed.
Victoria Kensington stared at her as they passed.
There was flour on Clara’s sleeve.
Damian still carried the saucer with the half-eaten pie.
That apparently made the situation stranger.
He led Clara upstairs and into a private study she had cleaned dozens of times but had never entered while he was inside.
The door locked behind them.
Damian set the plate on his desk.
“Say your mother’s name again.”
“Joanne Hughes.”
His face tightened.
“She worked here twenty years ago?”
“Yes.”
“Until she was accused of stealing.”
Clara’s heart began pounding.
“You remember her.”
“I remember everyone telling me she was a thief.”
Clara swallowed.
“She wasn’t.”
Damian looked toward the pie.
“I know.”
Two words.
Clara stopped breathing.
“What?”
“I said I know.”
“You know she didn’t steal?”
“I know now.”
Anger hit so quickly that she forgot who she was speaking to.
“My mother spent twenty years terrified because of this family. She changed our name. She moved us to Albany. She checked locks three times every night.”
Damian didn’t interrupt.
“And you knew?”
“Not then.”
“When?”
“Six years ago.”
Clara stared at him.
“Six years?”
“I found irregularities in old estate records.”
“And you did nothing?”
His jaw tightened.
“I tried to find Joanne.”
“You didn’t try very hard.”
“No.”
The answer disarmed her.
Damian opened a drawer and removed an old photograph.
Ten-year-old Damian sat on a kitchen counter holding a fork.
Beside him stood Joanne Hughes, laughing.
Clara’s mother looked younger than Clara remembered her.
Happy.
Safe.
On the back was a date.
And one sentence in a child’s handwriting.
Joanne makes the only pie that tastes like home.
Clara looked at him.
“My mother kept talking about that birthday.”
“So did I.”
For one second, Damian was not a mafia boss.
He was a boy remembering someone who had been kind to him.
Then he opened a second drawer.
This time he removed a sealed envelope.
The paper had yellowed with age.
Across the front, in Joanne’s handwriting, were three words:
FOR DAMIAN ONLY.
Clara’s knees nearly weakened.
“Where did you get that?”
“I found it inside my father’s private safe after he died.”
“Did you open it?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because my father wrote one instruction across the back.”
Damian turned the envelope over.
May you like
In black ink, his father had written:
If Joanne Hughes ever returns, kill her before Damian reads this.
