Chapter 3 - THE SECRET CELESTE HID FROM HER HUSBAND
The hidden phone was locked.
That was the first problem.
The second was Edwin Arden arrived at Blackwood mansion before dinner.
Mara heard his voice before she saw him.
Smooth. Warm. Older. The kind of voice that probably calmed bank managers and charmed reporters while signing other people’s ruin.
She stood frozen inside Celeste’s sitting room while Lucien went downstairs to meet him. Every instinct told her not to face the man yet. Not until she understood what Celeste had known.
Mrs. Wren appeared with a dinner tray and whispered, “You should eat, Mrs. Graves.”
Mara looked at her.
“Did Celeste trust you?”
The older woman flinched.
For a second, Mara thought she would deny everything.
Instead, very softly, Mrs. Wren said, “Miss Celeste trusted very few people near the end.”
“Did she trust Edwin?”
Mrs. Wren’s face went pale.
Before she could answer, voices rose below.
Not shouting.
Worse.
Controlled male anger.
Mara stepped into the hall and moved silently toward the top of the grand staircase.
Lucien stood in the foyer facing a silver-haired man in an expensive charcoal coat.
Edwin Arden.
He looked like money dressed itself in grief and taught itself how to smile.
“I came the moment I heard she woke,” Edwin was saying. “And you kept me waiting.”
Lucien’s expression was unreadable.
“She needs rest.”
“She’s my niece.”
“And my wife.”
Edwin gave a thin smile.
“Then perhaps we should both be concerned that she now seems unable to recognize either of us properly.”
Mara’s pulse kicked harder.
He already knew.
Lucien had told him enough—or Edwin was testing.
Edwin lifted his eyes and saw her standing above.
His smile deepened.
“Celeste.”
Mara gripped the banister.
He looked pleased and disappointed at once, as if she were a witness who had inconveniently survived.
“How are you feeling, my dear?” he asked.
Every nerve in Mara screamed.
She forced herself to answer with careful uncertainty.
“Tired.”
Edwin opened his hands.
“Of course. A trauma like this can leave a woman saying all kinds of strange things.”
Lucien’s jaw hardened.
Edwin continued smoothly, “The doctor mentioned some confusion.”
Mara understood then: he was not waiting to see whether she remembered.
He was already preparing to bury her memory beneath the word unstable.
She descended the stairs slowly.
The moment she reached the marble floor, Edwin moved as if to embrace her.
Mara stepped back.
His eyes flickered.
Only for an instant.
But she saw it.
Coldness.
Calculation.
The same coldness Celeste had felt in the rearview mirror before the crash.
Edwin recovered at once.
“Poor girl,” he murmured. “You’ve had a terrible fright.”
Mara met his gaze.
“So did the person driving the white vehicle.”
The foyer went silent.
Lucien did not move.
Edwin’s expression didn’t crack.
Not fully.
But one beat passed too long.
Then he smiled again.
“I beg your pardon?”
Mara held his eyes.
“The one who hit us.”
Lucien watched them both.
Edwin sighed, turning to Lucien as though indulgently handling a child.
“You see? This is exactly what I feared. Concussion, memory distortion—”
“Get out,” Lucien said.
Edwin looked at him.
“Lucien.”
“I said get out.”
Edwin’s face cooled.
“I’m only trying to protect my niece.”
Lucien stepped closer.
“No. You’re trying to manage a narrative.”
For one electric second, Mara thought Edwin might push back harder.
Instead he reached for his gloves with composed hands.
“Very well. But if her behavior worsens, she needs medical supervision, not interrogation.”
He looked at Mara one final time.
It was not affectionate.
It was a warning.
Then he left.
The heavy front doors shut behind him.
Mara realized only then that her hands were shaking.
Lucien turned to her.
“That was reckless.”
“He knows.”
“Yes.”
“So do you.”
Lucien’s eyes moved to the staircase, then back to her.
“Come with me.”
He led her not upstairs but down a narrow corridor hidden behind the library.
At the end waited a locked door she would never have found alone.
Inside was a small archive room—shelves, ledgers, family correspondence, trust records, and an old oak desk.
“Celeste brought me here once,” Lucien said. “The night before she stopped telling me anything.”
He opened a drawer and removed a leather journal.
“Her personal notebook.”
Mara took it carefully.
Most pages were blank or full of mundane household notes—charity schedules, guest lists, reminders.
Then halfway through, the handwriting changed. Became tighter. Harder.
Uncle Edwin had access long before Father died.
The missing trust transfers began two months before the funeral.
If Lucien confronts him too early, Edwin will destroy everything.
Mara turned the page.
I think Mara is brave enough to publish this if I fail.
I pray I am not getting her killed.
Mara’s throat tightened.
There were more entries.
About forged land deals.
Disappearing foundation funds.
A board vote Edwin wanted before the end of winter.
And finally, one page half torn at the edge.
I cannot tell Lucien everything yet because if I am wrong, I ruin the only person who ever loved me without needing Arden money. But if I am right, Edwin knows I have the ledgers. He has started asking about Mara.
Lucien went still beside her.
“She thought I’d act too soon,” he said.
Mara looked at him.
“She thought you’d try to protect her.”
He let out a hollow laugh.
“She was right.”
Then Mara’s gaze caught on something tucked inside the journal.
A photograph.
She pulled it free.
It showed Celeste and Mara together under a black umbrella outside a café.
Celeste looked frightened.
Mara—her real self—looked determined.
On the back Celeste had written one line:
If anything happens to me, let the woman in this photograph finish what I started.
Lucien took the photo from her with careful fingers.
His eyes moved from the image to Mara’s face.
Or rather to Celeste’s face holding Mara’s expression.
And for the first time since she woke, he did not look at her like a madwoman.
He looked at her like someone standing on the edge of an impossible truth.
Then the hidden phone in his hand buzzed.
A passcode request vanished.
A voice note began to play on its own.
Celeste’s voice filled the archive room, faint and shaking.
“If this unlocks, it means the mirror chose correctly.”
Mara’s blood ran cold.
Lucien stared at the phone.
Celeste continued.
“Lucien, if you’re hearing this, I failed to outrun him. And if Mara is alive enough to hear me… then Blackwood did what the women in my family always whispered it could do.”
Lucien looked up slowly.
“What did she mean,” he said, “the mirror chose correctly?”
Mara turned toward the doorway, suddenly aware that the gold-framed mirror upstairs might not have been merely a hiding place.
It might have been something far older.
Something Celeste had known about long before the crash.
And whatever that ancient thing had done, it had tied Mara’s dead life to Celeste’s ruined one.
The phone crackled again.
Celeste’s recorded voice broke into a whisper.
“Do not let Edwin take the west gallery key.”
Lucien and Mara stared at each other.
Then, without another word, both of them started toward the stairs.
May you like
Because somewhere inside Blackwood mansion, the dead woman had left them another secret.
And she had hidden it in the one place Edwin clearly had not reached yet.
