Back in New York, the Estate felt deceptively light with Alistair absent. Victoria found Lady Beatrice in the rose garden. The “Matriarch” was on her knees in the dirt, aggressively pruning a bush, tears streaming down her face.
“Beatrice?” Victoria asked softly.
Beatrice dropped the shears and turned, her face a mask of terror. “He’ll be back soon. We have to be perfect. If we aren’t perfect, he punishes us.”
Victoria knelt beside her. “He isn’t a ghost, Beatrice. He’s just a man. Why are you so afraid of him?”
“Because I know what he’s capable of,” Beatrice sobbed, finally shattering. “Ten years ago… he didn’t die of a heart attack. The federal indictment was coming. The RICO charges. He told me he had to disappear.”
Beatrice grabbed Victoria’s wrist, her grip bruising. “He made me help him staging the scene. The body… it was a cadaver from the medical school. He told me that if I didn’t help him fake his death, he would have William and Malcolm killed. He said he would burn the whole lineage to the ground.”
Victoria stared at her, horrified. Beatrice wasn’t the villain of the story; she was a hostage who had spent a decade protecting her grandsons from a monster by keeping his secret.