Chapter 1 - THE NAME BENEATH THE FLOWERS
Robert Lawson kicked open the honeymoon-suite door with his shoulder.
White rose petals lifted from the carpet. The champagne remained untouched, the bedspread smooth beneath a heart arranged in red flowers.
Katherine was on the floor beside the dresser, clutching the torn front of her lace gown. Caleb sat several feet away in his white shirt, his wedding jacket abandoned near the bed.
“Mom,” Katherine sobbed. “He married me just to punish me.”
Grace rushed past her husband and dropped to her knees.
Katherine recoiled before Grace could touch her.
That small movement stopped everyone.
Grace had spent two years calling Katherine the daughter she never had. She had altered her own wedding veil for the ceremony, hosted the rehearsal dinner and cried through the father-daughter dance because Katherine’s parents were dead.
“What did he do?” Robert demanded.
Caleb lifted his head.
His face held no triumph—only exhaustion and something dangerously close to relief.
“She had to pay for Beatrice.”
Katherine stared at him.
Robert’s hand closed around Caleb’s shirt and hauled him upright.
“Tell us what you planned.”
Caleb shook beneath his father’s grip. “I wanted the truth.”
Grace moved between them.
“No one leaves until I know who Beatrice is.”
Robert released Caleb so abruptly that he stumbled backward.
Katherine noticed.
So did Grace.
A photograph lay beneath the bridal bouquet. Katherine picked it up with unsteady fingers.
It showed Caleb three years younger, wearing a hard hat beside a smiling Black-haired woman in an orange safety vest. Robert stood behind them at the edge of a highway construction site.
Someone had written a date on the back.
October 14—the day before a retaining wall collapsed outside Richmond and killed one engineer.
Grace looked from the picture to her husband.
“You knew her?”
Before Robert answered, a phone began ringing inside the closet.
Caleb turned toward it.
Katherine reached the door first.
The phone had been propped between two shoe boxes with its camera aimed through the slats. On the screen, a recording timer continued counting.
Caleb had not brought her to the suite merely to frighten her.
He had intended to capture whatever she said.
Katherine stopped the recording and held the phone against her chest.
“What confession were you expecting?” Grace asked.
Caleb looked at his new wife.
“That she buried the report that killed Beatrice.”
May you like
Katherine’s tears slowed.
“I didn’t bury it,” she said. “Your father did.”
