Chapter 8 - THREE MONTHS
Maeve received the message the next morning.
Forty-six days remaining.
Margaret never wrote greetings.
Only instructions.
Finn’s surgery had been moved forward.
The hospital wanted him admitted in two weeks.
Maeve should remain cooperative.
The separation would happen after his recovery.
Maeve deleted the message.
Then restored it from the trash.
For evidence.
She had started keeping everything.
Every threat.
Every payment confirmation.
Every instruction.
At first, she told herself it was protection.
Now she knew better.
She was preparing for the day Elias learned the truth.
She wanted proof that she had not invented the trap alone.
That afternoon, Elias asked her to accompany him to one of the Marchetti foundations.
The center funded vocational training for teenagers leaving foster care.
Maeve looked around the renovated warehouse.
“You built this?”
“My mother did.”
“I thought your father died when you were twelve.”
“He did.”
Elias looked toward a classroom.
“My mother cleaned offices after he died.”
Maeve stopped.
“You grew up poor?”
“Very.”
That surprised her.
Everything about Elias suggested inheritance.
Old power.
Old money.
He noticed her expression.
“What?”
“I assumed…”
“That I was born wearing a suit?”
Maeve smiled.
“Something like that.”
Elias looked at her smile.
It was different from Sienna’s.
Less practiced.
More dangerous to him.
“My uncle built the first company.”
Elias continued.
“I expanded it.”
“And everything else?”
His expression shifted.
“Some things are easier not to explain.”
Maeve understood.
This was as close as he would come to acknowledging the darkness surrounding his name.
A teenage boy approached in a work apron.
“Mr. Marchetti?”
Elias turned.
The boy held a small wooden box.
“I made this in carpentry.”
Elias opened it.
Inside was a badly carved letter M.
“It is crooked.”
The boy’s face fell.
Elias ran a thumb over it.
“So was my first warehouse.”
The boy laughed.
Maeve stared.
Elias handed the box back.
“Make me another one next year.”
“Better?”
“No.”
Elias said.
“Different.”
On the drive home, Maeve was quiet.
Elias noticed.
“What are you thinking?”
“That people don’t know you.”
“People know enough.”
“No.”
Maeve looked out the window.
“They know the parts that scare them.”
“And you?”
Her heartbeat changed.
“What about me?”
“What parts do you know?”
Maeve turned.
The car moved through snowy Chicago streets.
For once, Gabriel was in the front seat and the privacy divider was raised.
They were alone.
“I know you pretend not to care when people thank you.”
Elias’s eyes narrowed slightly.
“I know you hate being helped unless you ask.”
She continued.
“You remember everyone’s injuries.”
“You read contracts twice when you’re angry.”
“You turn your ring when you think someone is lying.”
Elias became completely still.
Maeve noticed.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
But it was not nothing.
He was turning the ring now.
Maeve looked at it.
Then at him.
Fear entered her eyes.
Elias stopped immediately.
He placed his right hand flat on his thigh.
“You’re observant.”
Maeve gave a nervous smile.
“Invisible people usually are.”
The words escaped before she could stop them.
Elias heard them.
Of course he did.
“Sienna Ashford has never been invisible a day in her life.”
Maeve’s face went white.
The car continued moving.
Elias watched her.
She looked toward the door as if measuring whether jumping from a moving vehicle was possible.
Then Elias said calmly, “But perhaps she should have been.”
Maeve stared at him.
He looked away.
That night, she did not sleep.
Neither did he.
May you like
Two rooms apart, both knew the lie was collapsing.
Only one of them knew exactly how close the truth had come.
