Chapter 3: The Number He Didn't Recognize
Chadworth stayed in the monitoring room for a long time after Sabina ended the call.
The security chief — a man named Darvell who had worked for the Prescott family for eleven years and never once raised his voice — set a printed page on the desk without a word.
"What is this?" Chadworth asked.
"The number she called.
I ran it the moment she dialed."
Chadworth picked up the page.
The number was registered to a shell company.
The registered address was a postal box in the financial district.
The company name was listed as Velloran Consulting.
"I know that name," Chadworth said.
"You should.
They submitted a proposal to acquire a minority stake in Prescott Holdings fourteen months ago.
You declined the meeting."
Chadworth set the page down slowly.
"Who runs it?"
"Officially, a man named Gregor Fane.
But Fane is a front.
The actual beneficial owner took us about forty minutes to trace." Darvell paused.
"His name is Aldric Mourne."
The room went very still.
Aldric Mourne.
A man Chadworth had crossed in a property dispute six years ago.
A man who had stood in a boardroom and said, very calmly, that he did not forget things.
A man Chadworth had dismissed as a bruised ego in an expensive suit.
"How long has Sabina been in contact with him?" Chadworth asked.
"Based on the phone records we've pulled so far — at least eighteen months."
Chadworth looked up.
"We've been engaged for fourteen."
Darvell didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
Chadworth stood and walked to the monitors.
On the screen, Sabina was now in the sitting room, her posture entirely relaxed, scrolling through her phone as though the morning had been perfectly ordinary.
Her expression was smooth.
Unbothered.
Almost bored.
"She came into my life already working for him," Chadworth said.
"That's what the timeline suggests."
"And the girls." Chadworth's voice dropped.
"Getting me to distrust Rosamund.
Isolating the girls from the one person in this house who was actually protecting them." He turned away from the screen.
"That wasn't cruelty for its own sake.
That was strategy."
"If Rosamund was dismissed," Darvell said carefully, "the girls would have no one they trusted inside the house.
No witness.
No one to tell you what was happening when you were away."
Chadworth pressed his hand flat against the desk.
"Pull everything.
Every call.
Every message.
Every transaction connected to Velloran.
I want it all before tonight."
"Already started."
"And Darvell." Chadworth looked at him directly.
"Nobody in this house learns I'm here.
Not the staff.
Not anyone."
"Understood."
Chadworth turned back to the monitors.
Sabina had set her phone down and was examining her nails with the quiet patience of someone who believed she had already won.
He watched her for a long moment.
Then he picked up his own phone and made a call.
"Marcus," he said when the line connected.
"I need you in the city.
Today.
Don't tell anyone you're coming."
His lawyer asked no questions.
That was why Chadworth had kept him for twenty years.
"I'll be there by two," Marcus said.
Chadworth ended the call and looked back at the screen.
On the upstairs camera, Rosamund was helping Lorelai button her school coat.
Lorelai was talking — animated, relaxed, her whole face open in a way Chadworth almost didn't recognize.
He had not seen that expression directed at him in a very long time.
Gemma appeared in the doorway holding her stuffed rabbit, the one Sabina had thrown onto the sofa.
Someone had brought it upstairs and returned it to her.
Rosamund had gone back for it.
Chadworth watched his younger daughter press the rabbit against her chest and walk into the room, and something shifted in him that had nothing to do with strategy or evidence or legal exposure.
He had almost fired that woman.
He had sat at a dinner table and let Sabina's voice work on him night after night, and he had almost looked his daughters' only protector in the eye and told her to leave.
"Sir," Darvell said quietly.
"I know," Chadworth said.
He sat back down.
There was work to do.
And Sabina could not know — not yet — that the man she believed was thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic was sitting twelve meters away, watching everything.
His phone lit up on the desk.
A message from Sabina.
*Missing you already.
The girls are fine.
Everything is perfect here.*
He read it twice.
Then he set the phone face-down on the desk.
Everything is perfect here.
He thought about Gemma's lower lip.
About Lorelai shutting her book before she was even asked.
About the way two small children had reached for each other like they had practiced it.
His thumbs didn't move toward a reply.
Across the mansion, on the monitor, Sabina picked her phone back up and waited.
When no answer came, the small, satisfied smile on her face flickered — just once — before she smoothed it back into place.
She was still waiting when Darvell placed a second printed page on the desk.
"First financial record," he said.
"Velloran made three wire transfers to an account connected to Sabina's sister in the eight weeks before she introduced herself to you at the Hargrove Foundation dinner."
Chadworth didn't touch the page.
"She was paid to meet me," he said.
"Yes."
The monitor showed Sabina setting her phone down again.
Patient.
May you like
Certain.
Chadworth picked up the printed page and read every line.
