Chapter 5 – THE TRUTH BEHIND THE ARRANGED ENGAGEMENT

Vanessa stared at the orange bottle in my hand, her chest heaving.

“Give that to me, you stupid woman,” she snarled, lunging forward.

I stepped back, holding the bottle out of her reach. “You’ve been drugging Beatrice to make Daniel think she was losing her mind. So you could ship her off and have the house to yourself.”

“She wouldn’t stop snooping!” Vanessa screamed, the echo bouncing off the concrete stairwell. “She was always asking questions about the past. About Claire! I just needed her to sleep so I could pack my things and get Daniel to marry me!”

I stared at her, horrified. “Why? You’re marrying a billionaire. You have everything.”

Vanessa let out a dark, bitter laugh.

“I have nothing,” she spat. “My father’s company went bankrupt two years ago. I am drowning in debt, Raina. If I don’t marry Daniel by the end of the year, I will lose everything.”

She backed against the wall, running a shaking hand through her blonde hair. The polished socialite was gone; in her place was a desperate, cornered animal.

“It was a business arrangement,” she whispered. “Daniel’s board of directors wanted a merger with my father’s legacy name. They pushed us together. Daniel didn’t want me. He never wanted me. He’s still obsessed with his dead wife.”

“So you wore her bracelet?” I asked, my voice trembling. “You kept a train ticket from the night she died?”

Vanessa looked up, her eyes wide with manic fear.

“I didn’t kill Claire,” she whispered. “I swear to God, I didn’t kill her.”

“Then why were you in Boston that night? Why do you have her things?”

Before she could answer, the stairwell door burst open.

Daniel stood there.

He had heard everything.

Vanessa’s face crumpled. “Daniel…”

Daniel didn’t look at her. He looked at me, his eyes hollow, and took the orange bottle from my hand.

“The police are on their way,” he said to Vanessa. “For what you did to my mother.”

Vanessa let out a wretched sob and slumped against the railing.

I looked at Daniel. He looked like a man who had lost his entire world.

“Daniel,” I said softly. “You need to see this.”

I pulled the torn corner of the photograph from my pocket—the one Beatrice had hidden in her rosary. The photo of the woman’s arm on the steering wheel, wearing the red silk sleeve and Claire’s silver bracelet.

Daniel took the piece of paper. He stared at it for a long, terrible moment.

Then he looked up at me, his eyes filled with a grief I couldn’t comprehend.

“Raina,” he whispered. “This isn’t Vanessa’s arm.”

I frowned. “But the red sleeve…”

“It’s Claire’s arm,” Daniel said, his voice breaking. “Claire was driving. But she wasn’t alone in the car.”