Chapter 4 - catherine’s locked door
Brooke screamed when Dominic ordered the search.
Not loudly. Not crudely. She was too trained for that. Her scream came dressed as outrage.
“You cannot be serious.”
Dominic glanced toward Marco Bennett, his security chief, who had entered silently from the west hall. Marco had arrived ten minutes after Dominic landed and had been waiting for the moment his employer stopped pretending this was a family discussion.
“I am.”
Brooke stepped backward.
“That is my private room.”
“It is a guest room in my house.”
“I am your fiancée.”
“Then you should have been careful what you hid under my roof.”
Her face twisted. “This is abusive.”
Natalie’s hand flew to her mouth.
Emma stared at Brooke as if the woman had finally run out of elegant costumes and chosen madness.
Dominic’s expression did not move.
“Marco.”
Marco nodded and spoke into his earpiece.
Two female security officers entered a moment later. Dominic had learned long ago that guilty people complained less when the people opening drawers could not easily be accused of impropriety.
Brooke realized the same thing and grew paler.
“You planned this.”
“I came home to observe,” Dominic said. “You made planning unnecessary.”
She turned to Natalie.
“Tell him this is wrong.”
Natalie looked at her for a long time.
Six months earlier, Natalie Mercer would have apologized to the woman who hurt her just to keep the room quiet.
That woman was gone.
“You threatened my son,” Natalie said.
Brooke flinched as though slapped.
Natalie continued, voice shaking but clear. “You used my grief like a weapon. You made me feel like I should be grateful for things my own mother left me. You stood in my brother’s house and told my child he was temporary.”
Brooke’s tears spilled over.
“You’re confused.”
“No,” Natalie said. “I was confused before. I’m not anymore.”
Something shifted in Brooke’s eyes then. Tenderness died. Performance died. What remained was cold and sharp.
“You have no idea what your mother left behind.”
Dominic went still.
The room seemed to shrink around that sentence.
Brooke realized her mistake immediately.
But Dominic had already heard it.
“What did my mother leave behind?”
Brooke wiped her cheeks.
“I don’t know.”
“You just said Natalie had no idea.”
“I meant emotionally.”
“No, you didn’t.”
Marco’s earpiece crackled.
He listened, then looked at Dominic.
“We found a key.”
Brooke’s breath caught.
Dominic held out his hand.
Marco placed a small brass key in his palm.
It was old. Tarnished. Tied with a blue ribbon.
Natalie made a small sound.
Dominic turned to her. “You recognize it?”
“My mother wore that ribbon around her wrist the last summer she was sick.”
Dominic looked down at the key.
His mother, Catherine, had died in this house after a private illness she forbade anyone to dramatize. Even at the end, she had managed the family with soft hands and steel decisions. She had never wasted words. If she wore a key where people could see it, she intended someone to remember.
Brooke’s voice became thin. “I found it in a drawer.”
“In which drawer?”
“I don’t remember.”
Marco spoke again. “There are also copies of trust correspondence, photographs of the east cottage interior, and a contractor’s invoice for wall panel inspection.”
Dominic looked at Brooke.
“Wall panel inspection.”
She lifted her chin.
“I was planning renovations.”
“To a cottage you don’t own.”
“I was planning for our future.”
Dominic put the key in his pocket.
“Then let’s go see what my mother planned for ours.”
Rain had softened to mist by the time they crossed the estate toward the east cottage.
Dominic walked first, Marco beside him. Natalie held Noah’s hand. Emma followed close behind with an umbrella that nobody seemed to care about. Brooke came last between two security officers, furious and quiet.
The cottage looked smaller in daylight.
Gray shingles. White trim. Wild roses climbing one side. Catherine had loved it because it was the only place on the property that did not feel built to impress strangers.
Natalie stopped at the gate.
“I haven’t been inside since Mom died.”
Dominic turned.
“Why?”
She looked ashamed. “Brooke said it would be unhealthy. That I was clinging.”
Noah whispered, “I wanted to see Grandma’s books.”
Brooke looked away.
Dominic opened the cottage door.
The air inside smelled of cedar, dust, and lavender sachets.
Nothing had been moved.
A blue teacup sat upside down beside the sink. Catherine’s reading glasses rested on a side table. A half-finished crossword puzzle lay beneath a brass lamp as if she had only stepped into the garden and would return any minute to complain that everyone was being too dramatic.
Natalie began to cry silently.
Dominic did not comfort her immediately.
He was afraid if he touched her, he would break too.
Noah slipped away from his mother and walked toward a small shelf in the corner.
“Grandma kept the baseball books here.”
Dominic remembered.
Catherine had called it the nursery shelf, though no baby had slept in the cottage for thirty years. She had kept children’s books there for Noah, old picture frames, wooden animals, family albums.
Locked panel behind nursery shelves.
Marco moved the shelf carefully.
Behind it, the wall looked ordinary.
Brooke watched with the expression of someone witnessing a grave being opened.
Dominic knelt.
He ran his fingers over the wainscoting.
There.
A seam.
He took out the brass key.
The keyhole was hidden inside a carved rose.
Natalie gasped.
Dominic inserted the key.
It turned.
A narrow panel opened inward.
Inside was a metal document box and a sealed envelope.
On the envelope, written in Catherine Mercer’s elegant hand, were four words.
For Dominic, when ready.
Brooke whispered, “Don’t.”
Everyone turned.
She seemed to realize she had spoken aloud.
Dominic took the envelope.
“Why not?”
Brooke swallowed. “Because whatever she wrote, she was sick. You know she was. People say things at the end.”
“My mother knew exactly what she was saying until the last hour of her life.”
He opened the envelope.
Inside was a letter, a small silver flash drive, and a photograph.
Dominic looked at the photograph first.
It showed Catherine standing in the cottage garden with Brooke’s older brother, Preston Harrington.
The date printed in the corner was eight months before Catherine died.
Natalie frowned.
“Why was Preston here?”
Brooke’s face was white.
Dominic unfolded the letter.
He read silently.
With each line, the room darkened around him.
Finally, Natalie whispered, “Dom?”
He handed her the letter.
Her eyes moved across their mother’s handwriting.
Then she looked up at Brooke with horror.
“You knew.”
Brooke said nothing.
Natalie’s voice broke.
“You knew before the engagement.”
Dominic’s face had gone calm again.
Terribly calm.
Emma, standing by the door, felt the temperature of the cottage seem to fall.
“What does it say?” she asked softly.
Dominic looked at Brooke.
“My mother believed the Harrington family was using me to launder a political debt.”
Brooke’s lips trembled.
“That’s insane.”
May you like
Dominic held up the flash drive.
“And apparently,” he said, “she left proof.”
