Chapter 3 #2
“Nothing of use to us. Just gossip with her friends. Pictures of the lake. Searches to identify bugs in the garden. Tickets for the Vienna Boys' Choir performance for Christmas. Some notes about Christmas markets.” Late-night jam sessions through her favorite playlists and, on a good night, searches for adult content she’s curious about into the wee morning hours when she panics and deletes it all.
But only after she hides her favorites in a secret folder labeled “Recipes.” I’m busy smiling to myself about that when I hear Grant calling my name through the phone.
“What? Sorry. I was distracted by something on the lake.” I toss another rock, and it doesn’t even skip, just disappears below the surface of the cold, rippling navy waves, down into the depths.
“I asked if you have a timeline in mind?”
“Not really. A couple more weeks maybe. I imagine I’ll have anything Charlotte could possibly use by then.
It might be enough time to soften her toward me, but I don’t know how much she’s going to confess to an outsider.
The priest thing helps me as much as it hurts me.
She thinks I’m too fucking holy to tell me any of her dirty family secrets or anything that would be particularly helpful in twisting Daddy's arm.” At least unless I’m behind the mask of the confessional.
I should try to arrange that again, but how I’d keep it a secret from her next time, I’m not sure.
“She might twist his arm for us. Or even if he knew just how easily we could snap her neck…” My brother sounds like me now. Cold and calculating. Her father tried to kill all of us, including my brother’s bride-to-be, and that simply couldn’t stand. But I wasn’t keen on the idea of harming her.
“She’s never even mentioned him. Not even in passing.” It’s the truth.
“Does that mean anything though? You said yourself she might not want you to know about him.” Grant knows as well as I do.
“It’s possible. Like I said, I’m hopeful with a little more time, she might crack open.” Especially now that I know she's been fantasizing about me late at night. That’s an opportunity I can exploit.
“We might not have that kind of time.” My brother points out the obvious.
We’d gotten a reprieve when we foiled the governor’s plan.
We had a loose eye on him in the form of our uncle, our very own mole in his establishment—not that he’s trusted with many details.
If he folded under our pressure, I can only assume the same would be true of the governor.
Pragmatically speaking, it really seems only a matter of time until he tries to kill us again.
There’s a real possibility we don’t have time to figure out the why before it all collapses in on us.
I need these reminders. The ones that keep me grounded when I get distracted by her and the pull I’ve created between us.
“I’ll press her tomorrow when I see her in the archives.
See if I can’t ask some questions about her life before that puts us down the path where she might start talking.
” It was high time to make some decent headway with her.
Something I can’t quite put my finger on has been holding me back, and I worry that it might grow if I don’t start putting a tighter leash on my imagination.
“Good. Don’t go soft on me, drinking all that German beer and spending your days on vacation.” Grant’s brotherly tone has returned.
“You know I’d much rather spend my vacations at a cabin in the Rockies, drinking some decent whisky and kicking your ass at a couple of rounds of cards.”
“Then let’s get you back here to do that.”
“I’ll call you in a few days. Let you know how it goes,” I promise.
“Oh. I almost forgot. Rowan’s in Munich on business for the next few days.
Acting as a courier for one of Charlotte’s projects.
He said to see if you wanted to meet up.
” Rowan is one of Charlotte’s many paramours and Hudson’s head of security.
The Kellys and the Stocktons share business and many of the same passions and problems—one of them being the governor.
I could pass some discoveries from the archives off to him by hand and relieve my mattress of the storage.
“Yeah. I can take the train in. I’ll text him.”
“Good. Good. I’ll talk to you soon. Light a candle for my immortal soul, will you, Father?” Grant jokes.
“I don’t think there’s much of one left to save.” I laugh. “Talk soon.”
I hang up the phone and start to make my slow, meandering walk back toward the convent.
I'll need to be quiet entering the gates.
They have a curfew and quiet hours they like to maintain since so many of the walled inhabitants prefer the crack of dawn to the dead of night.
I'm not ready for bed quite yet. Too curious about what she’s up to.
I pull up the app that lets my phone mirror hers, and I see that she has a playlist pulled up.
It’s always an eclectic mix. New music and old.
Country and rock. Rap and pop. Love songs and rage songs.
It looks like a little window into her soul.
Whether it's the echoes of her past life she's found in those lyrics or just the pleasure of living vicariously through the melodies, I'm not sure yet.
I came here expecting someone completely different from the person I found—boring, plain, carrying out her father’s orders like a good soldier, with very little real good in her.
I’d been sure, given the evidence of her support for his campaigns in the past, the seemingly picture-perfect family, and her proximity to a treasure trove of relics—one that might include the final piece to the collection he was creating.
It was all a sure sign of her involvement with him.
But she seems to genuinely care about the other nuns here and always seems to make the sightseers smile when she tours them around the abbey.
All of her interactions with me leading up to today have been nothing short of innocent goodwill.
So much so that I almost feel guilty for stalking her like this. Almost but not quite.
It means I’m missing something, potentially the key piece we need to make the whole puzzle come together, and I can’t afford to waste much more time trying to figure it out.