Chapter 2 - THE NIGHT SHE FINALLY FELL
Diamond noticed the shaking first.
It happened at 1:43 in the morning.
Caprice stood beside the library table polishing a silver picture frame while her right hand trembled hard enough to make the glass rattle.
Diamond had been pretending to read.
He lowered the book.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Nothing."
"You're shaking."
"I'm tired."
"Then go home."
Caprice gave him the same expression she gave dirty windows.
"Are you paying me for the hours I miss?"
"No."
"Then I'm not going home."
Diamond almost smiled.
Almost.
He had begun to understand that arguing with Caprice was like arguing with gravity.
She did not defeat you.
She simply waited until you realized reality was not changing for your convenience.
"You always this stubborn?"
"You always this nosy?"
Diamond's eyebrows lifted.
Caprice immediately returned to polishing.
That was when the phone inside her apron vibrated.
She glanced at the screen.
Whatever she saw changed her face.
Diamond noticed.
Caprice answered quickly.
"Hello?"
Silence.
Then her shoulders lowered.
"No. Don't wake her."
Diamond watched.
"I understand."
Another silence.
"I'll bring the payment Friday."
Her hand tightened around the phone.
"Please don't move her room. Changes make the confusion worse."
Diamond's gaze sharpened.
"Please."
Caprice closed her eyes.
"I said I'll find it."
She disconnected.
For several seconds, she stood perfectly still.
Then she put the phone away and resumed polishing.
Diamond looked back at his book.
"Who?"
Caprice did not answer.
"The woman on the phone."
"My business."
"You work in my house."
"That doesn't make my life your business."
Diamond stared at her.
People had disappeared for less disrespect.
Yet instead of anger, something warm and strange moved through him.
He closed the book.
"Your mother?"
Caprice froze.
That answered him.
Diamond remembered Mrs. Higgins mentioning memory care.
"How much?"
Caprice turned.
"No."
"I didn't offer anything."
"You were about to."
"How much do you owe?"
"No."
Diamond's expression hardened.
"You enjoy suffering?"
Something flashed in her exhausted eyes.
"Do you?"
That landed harder than she knew.
Diamond went silent.
Caprice returned to work.
Neither spoke again.
At 3:10 a.m., Diamond left the library.
At 3:42, phantom pain woke him from the shallow half-sleep he managed most nights.
He reached for the controls beside his bed.
Then stopped.
A sound came from the sitting room.
He rolled through the doorway.
The lamp beside the leather sofa was still burning.
Caprice was there.
Asleep.
She had apparently sat down for only a moment.
Her cleaning rag remained in one hand.
Her head rested against the rolled leather arm of the sofa.
One shoe had slipped halfway from her heel.
Diamond stared.
He should wake her.
He should call Mrs. Higgins and have her fired.
Instead, he watched the slow rise and fall of her shoulders.
For once, Caprice did not look guarded.
She looked young.
Too young to have eyes that tired.
A strand of brown hair lay across her cheek.
Diamond moved closer.
Then he noticed something on the floor.
An envelope had fallen from her apron.
FINAL NOTICE.
He bent awkwardly from his wheelchair and picked it up.
The envelope was addressed to Caprice.
He should not open it.
Diamond Kelly had built an empire by ignoring moral boundaries, but strangely, this one stopped him.
He placed it on the table.
Caprice shifted.
Her head slipped from the armrest.
Before Diamond thought about what he was doing, his hand moved beneath her temple.
She settled against his palm.
Diamond froze.
Human touch had become complicated after the shooting.
Nurses touched him professionally.
Doctors clinically.
Everyone else cautiously.
Caprice, unconscious and unaware, simply rested against him.
Her breathing remained steady.
Diamond looked down at her.
Then something happened that would have shocked every person inside the Kelly organization.
He smiled.
Not the cruel half-smile men saw before bad news.
Not the cold expression he used during negotiations.
A genuine smile.
Small.
Rusty.
Almost painful.
"You're going to get yourself killed working like this," he whispered.
Caprice slept through it.
He shifted his hand carefully and positioned a cushion beneath her head.
Then he took the blanket from the back of the sofa and covered her.
He returned to his wheelchair.
And saw Levi standing in the doorway.
Diamond's smile vanished.
Levi looked from Diamond to Caprice.
Then back.
"I didn't see anything."
"Good."
Levi began retreating.
"Levi."
He stopped.
"Find out who manages her mother's facility."
Levi's face changed.
"Dom—"
"Don't pay anything."
Diamond looked toward the sleeping woman.
"Just find out what's happening."
Levi nodded.
By sunrise, Caprice woke violently.
She sat upright.
"Oh, God."
The clock read 6:17.
Her face drained.
She looked at the blanket.
Then at Diamond, who sat by the windows.
"Did you put this on me?"
"No."
"Then who did?"
"Ghost."
Caprice narrowed her eyes.
"You have a surprisingly considerate ghost."
Diamond turned toward the window to hide the corner of his mouth.
Caprice stood.
"I need to finish."
"It's morning."
"I fell asleep on company time."
"So?"
"So you paid me to work."
Diamond finally faced her.
"You were unconscious, Caprice. Not embezzling money."
She stared.
Then, unexpectedly, she laughed.
It lasted perhaps two seconds.
But Diamond felt it somewhere beneath his ribs.
Caprice gathered her supplies.
At the doorway, she stopped.
"Thank you."
"For what?"
"The ghost."
She left.
An hour later, Levi entered with a thin folder.
Diamond's expression changed immediately.
"What?"
"The facility isn't the problem."
Levi placed the folder down.
"Someone bought Caprice's mother's debt three months ago."
Diamond looked at him.
"Who?"
Levi hesitated.
"The shell company traces back to Victor Hale."
Everything inside Diamond went cold.
Victor Hale.
The man Diamond believed had ordered the sniper attack two years earlier.
"Why would Hale care about a maid?"
"That's not the interesting part."
Levi slid a photograph across the desk.
It showed Caprice leaving the memory-care center.
Beside her was an older man.
Diamond recognized him instantly.
His fingers tightened around the photograph.
The man had been Diamond's private driver.
The same driver who had disappeared three hours before the sniper shot Diamond.
Diamond looked toward the doorway Caprice had walked through.
For the first time since she entered his house, suspicion returned.
Only now it carried something worse.
May you like
Disappointment.
"Find out who she really is."
