Chapter Fourteen
Crown
My mother had been alive for seventeen years.
That fact remained in my head during the entire flight home.
Alive while I raised her children.
Alive while Asha cried herself to sleep because she couldn’t remember the sound of her voice. Alive when Micah broke his arm and begged for her at the hospital. Alive when Noelle graduated from medical school and left an empty seat beside mine.
I had buried an empty coffin.
She had allowed me to.
Jayla slept in the seat across from me with her head against the window. My jacket covered her body, although I didn’t remember placing it there.
I had checked her breathing eleven times.
Twelve, after I looked again.
“You need to sleep,” Dorian said.
“I’m not tired.”
“You’ve been staring at the same page for an hour.”
A report concerning Lenora Devereaux remained open on my tablet.
My aunt disappeared twenty-nine years ago. According to family records, she drowned after driving through a guardrail. Her vehicle was recovered from the Hudson River.
Her body wasn’t.
Apparently, my family enjoyed burying people without verifying they were dead.
“What did Lenora do before she disappeared?” I asked.
“Internal investigations for Devereaux Maritime.”
“She investigated Victor.”
“We found seven sealed complaints carrying her authorization. Smuggling, bribery, and missing cargo.”
“The women my father discovered?”
“Possibly.”
Dorian handed me another file.
Lenora had accused Victor of using company vessels to traffic women into private clubs owned by powerful men. My grandfather protected his heir, destroyed the investigation, and declared Lenora emotionally unstable.
Three weeks later, she disappeared.
“What would make her become Bishop?” Dorian asked.
“Being right and watching everyone call her crazy.”
“Doesn’t explain threatening children.”
“No.”
It didn’t explain my mother working beside her either.
Jayla moved beneath my jacket.
Her eyes opened.
“How long was I asleep?”
“Two hours.”
She looked down at the jacket.
“You put this on me?”
“You were cold.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Your hands were.”
She stared at me as if the observation meant something.
I looked back at the report.
“Did you sleep?” she asked.
“No.”
“Malachi.”
“I said no.”
“That wasn’t an answer. That was you trying to close the conversation.”
“It usually works.”
“Not with me.”
I knew that already.
Jayla unfastened her seat belt and sat beside me. She left enough space between us that our bodies didn’t touch.
“What are you reading?”
“Lenora’s employment records.”
“Can I see?”
I handed her the tablet.
She reviewed the documents silently.
“Your grandfather called her unstable after she accused his favorite child.”
“Yes.”
“Your family enjoys that word whenever women become inconvenient.”
“That isn’t unique to my family.”
“No. They’re simply richer when they do it.”
She enlarged an old newspaper article.
Lenora stood outside a courthouse carrying files against her chest. The silver scar along her jaw wasn’t present yet.
“She looks like Asha,” Jayla said.
“They have the same eyes.”
“And Nia?”
“My mother and Lenora were close.”
“How close?”
“Lenora introduced my parents.”
Jayla returned the tablet.
“Maybe your mother believed Lenora could help her escape.”
“Escape what?”
“Your uncle. Your father. The entire family.”
“My father loved her.”
“Love doesn’t automatically make a relationship safe.”
My eyes moved toward Jayla.
She didn’t retreat from the statement.
“You think he hurt her?”
“I think neither of us knows our parents as well as we believed.”
I hated that she might be right.
My phone vibrated.
A message appeared from an unknown number.
You always counted to four when you were frightened. Your father taught you to hide it. I taught you to breathe through it.
A second message followed.
Come to the winter garden tomorrow at eight. Bring Evelyn’s heir. Come without your army if you want answers.
I read it twice.
Jayla watched my face.
“Is it her?”
I showed her the screen.
She read the messages.
“I’m not going.”
“That wasn’t a request.”
“Bring Evelyn’s heir means me.”
“Yes.”
“And I’m saying no.”
“I didn’t intend to take you.”
“Good.”
“I’m going alone.”
“Absolutely not.”
I looked at her.
“You just refused to go.”
“I also refuse to let you walk alone into a trap designed by your resurrected mother and allegedly dead aunt.”
“That sentence is irritating.”
“Imagine living it.”
Dorian approached from the other side of the cabin.
“What happened?”
I gave him the phone.
He read the message.
“The winter garden at the original Devereaux estate?”
“Yes.”
“That property belongs to Julian.”
“Which confirms he’s involved.”
Jayla folded her arms.
“Then none of us should go.”
“We need answers.”
“You told me answers weren’t worth dying for when Kenzie was taken.”
“I said you weren’t trained.”
“And you are too emotional.”
Dorian looked toward the cockpit.
“Suddenly, I need to speak to the pilot.”
“Sit down,” I told him.
He continued walking.
Traitor.
Jayla faced me.
“Your mother knows exactly what to say to pull you toward her. That makes you vulnerable.”
“I’m not vulnerable.”
“You haven’t slept. You’ve reorganized that folder six times, and you’re tapping your fingers against your leg.”
I stopped.
“You are not going there alone,” she said.
“This has nothing to do with you.”
“Your mother’s message specifically included me.”
“I meant emotionally.”
That came out wrong.
Pain crossed her face before she concealed it.
“Of course,” she said. “Because I’m only useful when someone needs a key.”
“That isn’t what I meant.”
“It sounded clear.”
She returned to her original seat and gave me her back.
I tried to find better words.
Words had never been my strength when silence allowed fewer mistakes.
“Jayla.”
She looked out the window.
“You’re involved in everything,” I said.
“That doesn’t sound better.”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
I closed my eyes.
“You matter beyond the archive.”
Her shoulders lowered slightly.
“To whom?”
The answer arrived immediately.
“Me.”
She looked back.
Neither of us spoke.
Dorian returned, saw our faces, and nearly reversed direction.
My phone rang before the silence could become something else.
Asha appeared on the screen.
“Julian moved the board meeting,” she said. “It’s tomorrow morning.”
“What time?”
“Nine.”
An hour after my mother wanted me at the winter garden.
“He knows about the meeting,” I said.
“Of course he does. He petitioned for your immediate suspension. He claims your personal war with Bishop has endangered the company.”
“How many votes?”
“He has five confirmed. He needs two more.”
“How many uncertain?”
“Three.”
“What about my shares?”
“Frozen during the investigation into the Saint Lucia shooting.”
Dorian cursed.
Asha continued.
“There’s another issue. Sebastian’s shares were never transferred because no remains belonging to Nia were recovered. If she appears and establishes her identity, she controls them as his surviving spouse.”
“How many votes?”
“Three.”
Enough to determine everything.
My mother hadn’t only returned from the dead.
She could take the company I had spent my life building.
Jayla watched me carefully.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“We?”
“Yes, we.”
An hour earlier, I had hurt her by suggesting this wasn’t her fight.
She had still placed herself beside me.
“We attend the board meeting,” I said.
“And the winter garden?”
I deleted the message.
“If my mother wants to speak with me, she can stop hiding.”
The estate was quiet when we returned.
My siblings waited inside the sitting room. Noelle cried when she saw the image of our mother. Micah stared at it without speaking. Asha remained standing because sitting would have made the situation feel real.
“She left us,” Micah finally said.
“We don’t know that,” Noelle replied.
“She was alive.”
“She could have been held somewhere.”
“For seventeen years?”
“We don’t know.”
Their argument grew louder.
The overlapping voices pressed against my head.
“Stop.”
Nobody heard me.
“Stop!”
The room fell silent.
Asha looked at me.
“What do you believe?”
They had asked me that question since childhood.
What school should they attend? Could they go outside? Was there enough money? Would everything be all right?
I was tired of holding answers I didn’t have.
“I believe we go to the board meeting,” I said. “We protect the company and find the truth afterward.”
“You mean you decide what happens,” Micah replied.
“Yes.”
“You always decide.”
“Because somebody had to.”
“We aren’t children anymore.”
“Then stop behaving like them.”
Micah stood.
Jayla entered before he could respond.
She looked between us.
“Family meeting?”
“Family disaster,” Noelle muttered.
Jayla walked toward Micah.
“What do you want to do?”
He appeared surprised anyone had asked.
“I want to meet her.”
“So do I,” Noelle said.
Asha shook her head.
“It could be a trap.”
“It probably is,” Jayla agreed. “That doesn’t make what they want unreasonable.”
My siblings looked at her rather than me.
I didn’t like it.
I also understood it.
“What do you suggest?” I asked.
“We send a message. Nia comes here after the board meeting. Alone.”
“She won’t.”
“Then we learn she doesn’t want to see her children badly enough.”
Jayla turned to Micah and Noelle.
“Would that be enough?”
Micah nodded slowly.
Noelle wiped her face.
“Yes.”
Asha looked at me.
The decision remained mine.
That was exactly the problem.
“Send it,” I said.
Jayla typed the response from my phone.
Your children will meet you together. Tomorrow, noon, at Malachi’s estate. Come alone or don’t come at all.
The reply arrived less than a minute later.
I will be there. Tell my babies I never stopped loving them.
I looked at my siblings.
For the first time since I was seventeen, their lives were no longer mine to hold together alone.
I wasn’t sure whether that felt like freedom or failure.
Jayla stood beside me.
Close enough to touch.
She didn’t.
Somehow, that helped more.