Chapter Eighteen
Isla remained in her hiding area in case Victor decided to follow his daughter to console her and explain what he had meant to say.
When he didn’t, she chanced a look, the need to see what was going on too strong for her to stay tucked away in a corner.
She edged to the doorway, where Holland had left the door wide open when she stormed off.
He was seated at his desk, head in his hands.
Isla crouched low to the ground, watching him from outside, hesitant to move on, feeling that there was something more she was supposed to see.
She found Victor Corrigan impossible to turn away from.
His normally composed demeanor was gone, replaced by the same rawness and vulnerability she had seen in his daughter.
Victor sighed deeply, picking up a small key.
He knelt out of sight, and the next thing Isla heard was a drawer opening.
When he stood again, he was holding a small wooden box.
He placed it on his desk and stood there unmoving, deciding whether to open it.
He opened it after one last push. When he did, he stared down at its contents without moving or taking anything from it. He just looked.
“Edie,” he sighed, his voice growing thick with emotion, “how’d it all come to this? Why didn’t you just come to me? Why didn’t you tell me about your mother?”
Despite her purpose coming here, she felt intrusive and confused.
The heartless tycoon he displayed in public was not the man she was witnessing now.
This man was very much the opposite. Isla felt like a voyeur watching Victor at his most vulnerable, but whatever that was in the box making him so emotional had piqued her interest. He gathered himself quickly, snapped the lid of the box shut, put it back where he’d gotten it from, and began moving toward the door.
Isla rushed back to her hiding place. If she tried to make a break down the hall, he’d see her, and she’d have no excuse for being there.
She squeezed in just as Victor emerged from his study.
Victor closed the door behind him, lingering in front of it, deep in thought.
Isla pressed back farther against the wall, willing her heart to stop beating so loudly she swore he’d be able to hear it.
She held her breath, hoping the shadows held her in their cloak of invisibility.
Isla didn’t breathe again until his footsteps faded away and the hall was clear.
She straightened, her knees unreliable from her previous position. She turned to go back the way she came before her luck ran out and someone caught her where she wasn’t supposed to be. But the secret box encouraged her to push her luck a little bit more.
She expected the door of a mogul to be locked, but it wasn’t.
Maybe he thought no one would dare trespass in his own home.
Or maybe he’d forgotten after the blowup he’d had with Holland.
Isla didn’t ponder it long. She turned the knob and entered the study, lit only by the moonlight shining in and the one desk lamp he’d left on.
She closed the door behind her just in case someone passed by.
Time was short, and she hoofed it across the large study to the desk he’d just vacated.
Luck was with Isla again, because in Victor’s haste to leave, he’d pushed the drawer closed, but he hadn’t ensured it had closed all the way, which meant the lock hadn’t engaged, leaving the drawer open a crack. The contents of that drawer called to her like a siren.
She opened it, doing just as Victor had done and pulling the box from it. She didn’t sit in the chair. She stayed there on the floor, tracing the intricately carved lines on the box. The edges of the box were worn from too much handling. She opened the box.
Her two worlds collided.
She saw the photograph first and picked it up as if it were made of glass and might shatter upon touch.
She recognized a younger version of the girl she knew as Eden.
Eden—Edie, as Holland had called her—smiled back at her.
Her arm was slung happily around Victor’s neck.
They were outside, amid an oasis of bright flowers and lush greenery.
They both looked younger, and happier than Isla had ever seen either of them be.
Isla blinked away tears. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle the grief and pain from spilling out.
Eden was a Corrigan? Isla set the photo aside, a glint of metal catching her eye.
Her breath caught at the bracelet, the one with a tiny key to the locket chain Eden’s mother owned and had given to Eden before she died.
Eden had worn her bracelet and her mother’s chain ever since.
In the time Isla had known Eden, the bracelet had never left her wrist. But here it was, in a box in Victor’s study. She took out the last item: a letter-size envelope addressed to Victor, with Eden’s name and a return address that was Eden and Elise’s home.
Carefully, she opened the letter.
Dad,
Mom’s dead and I blame you. She died because you broke her heart, and for that, I’ll never forgive you.
You never really cared about us, but I get it.
My mom wasn’t prestigious like Myles’s mom, or some perfectly cultured beauty like Bennett and Hol’s.
My mom was just a lowly assistant who you were too ashamed to be with in the open.
You pretended it was for her own good, made her leave, and then you forced me out too.
We were your dirty little secret—never good enough for your world or your Corrigan name.
You bulldoze over everything and anyone, using them up until you don’t need them anymore.
But I won’t let you do that to me. The most important thing to you is your name, your money, your power.
And I don’t want any of it. Not your money or your name or your indifference.
Mom is gone and I may be alone, but I’m not coming back.
Not ever. I’m going to live my life as I want.
Away from all of you. If there is nothing else you do for me, do this .
. . Leave me alone. Consider me dead because that is what you are to me. Dead.
Edie
Isla’s hands trembled as she read and then reread the letter, trying to understand the words that made no sense.
She stared at the photos, her mind numb.
Eden was Edie Corrigan. These people were Eden’s family.
No wonder Eden had always been so evasive about her past. The stories she’d told about her mom being fired by some horrible rich family who treated her mother like shit had been half truths at best. Eden hadn’t been some powerless, nameless nobody to the Corrigans. Eden was one of them.
The weight of the discovery was too much, and her limbs felt heavy.
Her best friend, who was like a sister to her and whom Isla had trusted implicitly—had trusted with her life—had been lying to her the entire time.
But why? Why go to such lengths to hide her true identity?
Why couldn’t Isla know who Eden really was?
Did Eden think Isla would only want to be friends with her because she was rich?
Or was Isla nothing but a joke to Eden, someone to yank around while she played rich-girl games with her billionaire father?
To make promises that they’d be sisters against the world only to up and disappear without so much as an explanation or goodbye?
Where was Eden’s letter to her?
She was angry. Was hurt and betrayed by the person she’d trusted the most. Her mind screamed with questions, but through all the tornado of emotions expanding like a hot-air balloon, a thought pinpricked, releasing her rage in a thin stream of air.
Isla picked up the bracelet and held it against her fingers so it caught in the dim light. Eden had been wearing this bracelet the night she disappeared. Isla was sure of it.
Eden would have never separated it from the matching chain her mother had given her.
The letter. Isla picked up the envelope and flipped it over to look at the postmark, which said “Daytona” with a date stamped weeks after she and Eden had left Daytona together. Weeks after they’d arrived in Charlottesville and Isla had been forced to leave alone.
Could Eden had doubled back after they’d separated?
But why? There was nothing left in Daytona for Eden—that was the reason why she’d wanted to start fresh in LA.
The house was being sold. No other family.
None of it matched the Eden Isla knew. Eden had never let on that she was an heiress.
She and her mother had lived in a little home, and Eden had never sounded like the Corrigans were her family.
Or maybe Isla had just misunderstood what Eden had been saying. Nothing was adding up.
The realization crept over her like the cold dead. Someone had sent this letter. Someone had sent Victor Eden’s bracelet, which meant that that someone had to know where Eden was. And whether she was alive or . . . Isla couldn’t finish the thought.
Isla put everything back as she had found it.
She even left the drawer cracked open, as Victor had by accident.
She left the study and somehow found her way back to her room without incident.
If she fell asleep that night, Isla couldn’t say.
But one thing was certain, the story she’d thought she knew about Eden—now Eden Corrigan, heiress to the Corrigan empire—and her disappearance was even more twisted than she had thought.
Because if the Corrigans did have something to do with her disappearance, they hadn’t gotten rid of some random girl—they’d gotten rid of one of their own.
Which begged the question: What was a secret big enough for them to go to those lengths?
There was a reason why Eden had hidden such a significant part of her identity. Isla was even more determined than ever to uncover it and blow up the world that Victor Corrigan had built.
And now that she was here, she wouldn’t leave until she had answers. No matter what it cost her.