Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN WHO WAS SUPPOSED TO DIE
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I stared at the photograph until the room seemed to tilt around me.
The picture showed me suspended beneath the red-and-gold canopy of the Starlight Circus. I was nineteen, smiling at the audience, my arms extended as if I could reach the stars.
I remembered that performance.
I remembered the final act.
And I remembered waking up in a hospital with a shattered shoulder, three broken ribs, and a surgeon telling me I might never lift my right arm above my head again.
For six years, I had believed a support cable snapped because of faulty equipment.
Now Vincent Moretti stood in my doorway, telling me someone had wanted me dead.
“Where did you get this?” I whispered.
“From a private investigator I hired after the party.”
“You hired an investigator to investigate me?”
“I hired someone to find out why a woman with professional aerial training was working in my house, and why Vanessa seemed determined to destroy her in front of a hundred witnesses.”
His voice was controlled, but his eyes weren't cold anymore.
They were searching my face.
“Why didn't you tell me you used to perform?”
“Because nobody hires a maid to hear her life story.”
“That isn't an answer.”
“It's the only one you're getting.”
I reached for the photograph. Vincent handed it over carefully, his fingers brushing mine.
The contact was brief.
It still made my heart stumble.
I hated that reaction. This man controlled an empire built on fear, and I had no intention of becoming another woman who mistook his attention for safety.
“What else did your investigator find?” I asked.
Vincent placed a folder on my desk.
“Your accident happened six years ago in Atlantic City. The equipment inspection report was signed by a company called Whitmore Event Logistics.”
My stomach tightened.
“Whitmore?”
“Vanessa's family owns it.”
I shook my head. “That doesn't prove anything.”
“No. But three days after your accident, the technician responsible for inspecting your rigging disappeared. His bank account received two hundred thousand dollars from an offshore company controlled by Vanessa's father.”
I sat down.
The room felt too small.
My father had sold his truck to pay my first hospital bill. My mother had taken a second job cleaning offices. I had spent months learning to use my right arm again while the circus owner told me there was no money to sue a wealthy event contractor.
And all that time, somebody might have been responsible.
“Why would they want to hurt me?” I asked.
Vincent's expression changed.
“That is what I haven't figured out.”
He opened the velvet box again and lifted the diamond bracelet.
“Vanessa was wearing this at your accident.”
I recognized it immediately.
The bracelet had appeared in a photograph taken backstage that night. Vanessa had been at the circus as a guest of honor, accompanied by her father and several investors. I remembered her standing near the equipment entrance, watching me with an expression I couldn't interpret.
But I had never known her name.
“Why are you giving me her bracelet?”
“Because it was found inside the locked safe in my study. Someone placed it there with your photograph.”
“Someone in your house?”
“Yes.”
For the first time, I saw something beneath Vincent's authority that looked disturbingly like fear.
Not fear for himself.
Fear that the danger had already entered his home.
“Grace, until I know who did this, don't leave the estate alone.”
I stood so quickly that my chair scraped the floor.
“I survived six years without you. I can survive another six.”
“I know you can.”
“Then stop giving me orders.”
He looked at me for a long moment.
Finally, he nodded.
“All right. No orders.”
He walked toward the door.
Before leaving, he turned back.
“One more thing. My investigator found a witness. A woman who worked backstage the night of your accident.”
“Who?”
“Her name is Elena Ruiz. She says she saw the technician remove a safety pin from your rigging.”
My breath caught.
“Where is she?”
“She agreed to meet us tomorrow.”
Hope rose so quickly that it hurt.
Then Vincent's phone rang.
He answered without taking his eyes off me.
“What?”
A man's voice came through the speaker, too faint for me to understand.
Vincent's expression hardened.
“Repeat that.”
Silence.
Then he said, “Get the police there. Don't touch anything until I arrive.”
He ended the call.
“What happened?” I asked.
His jaw flexed.
“Elena Ruiz was found dead in her apartment twenty minutes ago.”
I couldn't move.
“Was it an accident?”
Vincent looked at the photograph in my hand.
“No.”
He reached for the folder, pulled out a second photograph, and laid it on the desk.
It showed Elena standing beside a man outside the circus six years earlier.
The man wore a dark suit.
I recognized him immediately.
May you like
He had been the Moretti family's chief security officer.
And he was currently standing guard outside Vincent's bedroom.
