Chapter 12 - The Mother Who Betrayed Her Daughter.
By noon, a video of Margaret striking Claire in the parking garage had appeared online.
Someone had leaked the footage before they even left the city.
The public saw a wealthy mother attacking the bride whose wedding she had already destroyed.
Charles saw exactly what Rebecca said he needed to see.
Margaret appeared to hate Claire again.
Ethan drove toward the coast while Claire sat in the back seat beside Margaret.
Neither woman spoke for almost an hour.
The slap had been staged, but the sting on Claire's face was real.
"You enjoyed that a little," Claire finally said.
Margaret almost smiled.
"You have no idea how terrified I was that you'd smile at me afterward and ruin it."
It was the first almost-normal exchange they had ever shared.
Then Claire's expression hardened.
"When this is over, we still have twenty-three years to talk about."
Margaret nodded.
"I know."
Blackwood House sat on a cliff above a violent gray sea.
The estate looked abandoned from the road, but cameras followed their car from the gate to the main house.
Ethan stopped at the entrance.
Margaret turned to him.
"From this moment on, believe nothing I say."
He looked at the woman who had raised him.
"That part won't be difficult."
The words wounded her, but she accepted them.
Three armed security men met them in the stone foyer.
They searched Ethan and Claire, confiscated their phones, and took the metal strip.
Margaret was allowed to keep her handbag.
Charles Vale waited in a library overlooking the ocean.
He was eighty-three, thin, perfectly dressed, and very much alive.
Claire hated how ordinary he looked.
"Charlotte."
"Claire."
Charles smiled.
"Still stubborn. Your father had that defect too."
Margaret stepped in front of Claire.
"I brought her like you asked."
Charles studied his daughter.
"And Ethan?"
Margaret shrugged.
"He refused to leave her."
Ethan glared at her.
Charles laughed.
"Love makes intelligent people so easy to predict."
Rebecca sat bound to a chair near the fireplace.
Her lip was split, but she was conscious.
Ethan moved toward her.
A guard blocked him.
Charles held up the metal strip.
"Thomas thought this could ruin me."
Claire forced herself not to react.
He did not know they had already emptied the bank box.
"It opened nothing," Claire lied.
Charles's smile faded slightly.
"You were always a poor liar."
"You've known me for twenty minutes."
"I've known you your entire life."
The sentence chilled everyone.
Charles walked to a cabinet and removed a folder of photographs.
Claire saw herself at age five on a playground.
At twelve outside a school concert.
At sixteen in a driver's-license office.
At twenty-one leaving college.
And then a photograph of her first meeting with Ethan at a charity fundraiser three years earlier.
Ethan grabbed the picture.
"You were watching us?"
Charles looked pleased.
"I arranged for both of you to be invited."
Claire felt nausea rise.
"You engineered our relationship?"
"I created an opportunity. You supplied the romance."
Margaret's performance nearly broke as rage flashed across her face.
Charles turned to her.
"Don't look offended."
He smiled.
"Their wedding was always meant to bring Charlotte back to the Hale family."
Ethan stared at him.
"Why?"
Charles's eyes moved toward the floor.
"Because Thomas hid the master ledger somewhere only Charlotte could open."
Claire remembered Thomas's recording.
Beneath the chapel floor.
Charles had been searching the wrong place for twenty-three years.
Then Margaret opened her handbag.
"Maybe she isn't the only one who can open it."
She pulled out the brass key from the nursery.
Charles's expression changed.
For the first time, he looked surprised.
May you like
Margaret smiled coldly.
"Still think you can predict everything?"
