Chapter 1 - THE WOMAN AT THE GATE
Harrison Davenport took a step backward, his golf club trembling against the polished oak door. Roman Moretti did not step over the threshold. Instead he looked at Khloe, who had stopped beside him with rainwater dripping from her hair onto the marble steps.
"Do you want to go inside?" he asked.
It was such a simple question that for a moment she could not answer. Twenty minutes earlier, Patricia had ordered her out of the house and informed her she had no say in the matter. Roman's armed men had made an entrance that looked very much like another man's attempt to decide her future without asking.
"I want my father's sketchbook," Khloe said at last. "And Liam's blue notebook. They didn't let me take either."
"Then we'll request them." Roman glanced at the guards who were standing motionless in the rain. "Enzo. Weapons down. All of you."
Six pistols lowered. The estate guards remained rigid, but at least nobody was pointing anything at them anymore. Enzo looked almost offended. Roman ignored him. The snapped chain lay in the gravel like evidence, which of course it was.
"Call the police," Roman told Harrison. "Tell them we damaged your gate. Tell them everything. I want a record of this evening."
Harrison blinked. "You want me to call the police?"
"I said what I said."
Khloe felt an unfamiliar flicker of anger. "You should have asked before breaking the chain."
Roman turned to her. For a second she saw the man who had come out of an alley with a bullet in his side five years ago: wary, stubborn, too accustomed to being obeyed. "You're right," he said. "I should have."
That admission unsettled her more than the guns.
Patricia appeared at Harrison's shoulder in a black silk robe. The widow's mother had cultivated grief as carefully as she cultivated her white roses. Her eyes went immediately to Roman's face.
"Mr. Moretti," she said, her voice becoming smooth. "This is an unfortunate misunderstanding. Khloe became emotional after the funeral. We only wanted her to have a little space."
"You threw her into the rain with three dollars in her bank account," Roman replied.
"Our family finances are confidential."
"So is the location of the papers you took from her."
Patricia's gaze flickered toward Khloe. "What papers?"
"The blue notebook," Khloe said. "And the sketchbook my father gave me."
"Liam's things are estate property," Harrison snapped.
"My father's drawings are not."
Roman lifted one hand, and silence fell among his men. "She has asked for two personal belongings. If you refuse, she'll pursue them through counsel. There will be no searching your house tonight."
Khloe heard the disappointment in Harrison's breath; he'd expected a confrontation he could use against her. She was beginning to understand that Roman had arrived prepared for a fight but not necessarily prepared to make it the kind Harrison wanted.
"I also want to know where Liam's original will is," she added.
Patricia pressed her lips together. "Our attorney will address that."
"Who is your attorney?"
"Alden Pryce."
Roman's expression did not change, yet Enzo glanced at him sharply. Khloe noticed.
"We'll speak to Mr. Pryce," Roman said. "Khloe, come away from the door. You're freezing."
She wanted to say that she wasn't going anywhere until she had her things. Then her legs shook and she realized she had begun losing the ability to feel her toes. She permitted Enzo to take the canvas bag and walked toward the SUV. Behind her, Harrison called that he would have Roman arrested for trespassing. Roman turned without raising his voice.
"I would recommend it. Then you can explain why you evicted a surviving spouse without an order and confiscated her identification."
"She has her identification," Patricia said quickly.
Khloe stopped. "Not my passport. You kept it in the upstairs safe."
For the first time, Patricia looked genuinely surprised. Perhaps she had assumed Khloe would not remember which documents were missing while she was grieving.
Roman did not threaten anyone. He wrote down the names of the guards, asked Enzo to photograph the broken chain and the condition of Khloe's coat, and walked her to the vehicle. The interior was warm enough to make her fingers ache. He offered her a sealed bottle of water. She drank too quickly and coughed.
"Hospital," Roman told the driver.
"No," she said. "A hotel is fine."
"You're shaking and your lips are blue. The emergency department can check you for hypothermia."
"I can't pay for a hospital."
"You won't be left with the bill." He caught the look she gave him. "You can repay me if that's important to you. Or you can refuse the assistance. I won't make it a debt."
She studied him, trying to find the trick. "I don't know which of those things you mean."
"Fair."
The SUV moved away as a police cruiser turned onto Astor Street. Roman instructed Enzo to stay behind and give a truthful account of the damaged lock. Khloe closed her eyes. It had been less than an hour since Patricia placed Liam's photograph on the mantel and told her there was no room for a woman who could not bring money into the family. Already the night had become a police matter.
"Did you really own that gate?" she asked.
"No."
She looked at him.
"I own a mortgage interest in a company that owns part of the property behind it," he said. "The line sounded better in the rain. It wasn't entirely true."
"You haven't changed much."
"I have changed more than you know. Not all of it for the better."
At the emergency department a nurse wrapped Khloe in warmed blankets and checked her temperature. The physician found mild cold exposure and exhaustion, recommended observation and food, and asked whether she felt safe returning to her home. Khloe stared at that question. She had lived in a mansion with a dozen staff members and cameras in every corridor. She had never felt less secure than she had there.
"No," she said. "I don't."
Roman stood outside while the doctor spoke privately with her. That mattered. She had spent three years answering questions under Patricia's gaze, always aware that the wrong answer would be reported to her husband. The nurse gave her a list of local legal resources, and Khloe folded it carefully into her purse.
When she emerged, Roman had arranged a room in a downtown hotel under her own name. Not at his residence. He handed her a card with the number of a lawyer named Miriam Ellis.
"She represents people against me when she thinks I'm wrong," he said. "She isn't my employee. Call her if you want."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Because five years ago you could have left me in that alley. You didn't."
"I didn't save you so you'd own my next emergency."
"I know." He leaned against the hospital corridor wall, looking older than he had in the rain. "I haven't forgotten how frightened you were while you stitched my side. I also haven't forgotten you told me to stop giving orders in your father's shop."
Despite herself, she almost smiled. "You bled all over his workbench."
"He complained about the upholstery on my car when I drove him home the next week."
Her smile vanished. Her father had died a year after that, quietly, after a stroke. The shop had been sold to pay his debts. She had not known Roman visited him afterward.
"Your father made me promise something," Roman said. "If I could ever help you, I should ask what you needed before deciding. I managed to break that promise at your gate."
"You can keep it now."
He nodded.
Khloe checked into the hotel just after midnight. Roman had the desk clerk provide a written receipt in her name and walked away before she reached the elevator. There was no demand that she remain near him, no driver stationed outside her door. For the first time in two days she was alone with a bed that did not belong to the Davenport family.
She showered until feeling returned to her hands. Then she opened the canvas bag. Two sweaters. A toothbrush. Liam's old watch, its glass cracked. And a small packet of charcoal pencils that had belonged to her father. Everything she had thought to save in twenty minutes.
At the bottom lay a folded funeral program. She opened it because she couldn't bear to look at Liam's photograph on the front.
Something slipped from between the pages. A receipt from the private rehabilitation clinic, dated eleven days before Liam's death. She recognized the clinic's name, but not the treatment listed beneath it. The charge was for twenty-six thousand dollars. It had been paid from an account ending in 0197, marked WITHDRAWN AUTHORIZATION.
Khloe had paid for Liam's therapy. She knew the names of every specialist. She had never seen that account number.
Below the receipt, in Liam's increasingly shaky handwriting, were six words:
IF THEY SAY I SIGNED, ASK NORA.
Khloe read them again. Nora was the physical therapist Patricia had dismissed three months earlier for allegedly being too familiar with the family.
Her phone vibrated. A message from an unknown number appeared above the hospital discharge instructions.
YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT THE NOTEBOOK ALONE.
May you like
Khloe stared at the words, the warmth of the hotel room suddenly failing to reach her. She hadn't found the notebook. She had only asked for it at the front door.
Someone already knew she had started looking.
