_Rowena’s POV_

I had been awake for thirty-six hours when Celeste sat down across from me.

She looked at the laptop, at the open account ledgers spread across the desk, at the three empty tea cups lined up along the edge, and at me, and she did the specific thing Celeste did when she had an opinion she was choosing to deliver carefully.

She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot Velvet had refreshed an hour ago, sat down, and said nothing for a full minute.

“You burst into her room at two-thirty in the morning,” she said finally.

“I had reason.”

“You had suspicion,” she said. “Which is different. And now Alice is downstairs telling my grandmother that you chased a man onto the roof and accused her of embezzlement without a single piece of paper to show for it.”

“She is embezzling,” I said. “I just don’t have the documentation yet.”

“Rowena.” Celeste set her cup down. “I believe you. I have believed something was wrong with Alice for two years. But believing it and being able to act on it are different things, and right now you have given her the narrative. She’s the wronged grandmother. You’re the exhausted, recently divorced woman who came home and immediately started making accusations.” She looked at me steadily. “That’s not a position we can work from.”

I leaned back in my chair and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

She was right. I knew she was right. I had moved on instinct in the middle of the night because I was tired and raw and the sound of Alice’s voice without the performance had made something in me snap forward before my judgment caught up.

“Impulsive,” Kyra said, “not unkindly.”

“True.”

“She had weeks to prepare for this and you’ve been home for two days.”

“I know.”

“What did she tell them?” I asked. “Exactly.”

Celeste folded her hands on the desk. “That you disturbed her in the middle of the night. That her nephew had come to check on her, she’s already established him as a known relative, by the way, which means his presence has a cover story. That you went through her room and chased him onto the roof and accused her of crimes without cause.” A pause. “Your grandmother is upset. Not at you, she doesn’t believe Alice over you. But she’s upset that you didn’t come to her first.”

“I didn’t want to worry her.”

“I know. But not coming to her made it look like you were acting alone and erratically.” Celeste picked up her cup again. “So. We fix this carefully. Tell me what you know.”

I told her everything. The conversation I had overheard, the specific phrases, the subsidiary accounts, the early transfer records, the discrepancy she mentioned. The man’s knowledge of the estate’s security gaps, the pre-planned exit route, the folder he’d been carrying. The way Alice’s performance had cracked, just once, when I mentioned the folder.

Celeste listened without interrupting.

When I finished, she was quiet for a moment.

“The early account discrepancy,” she said. “You’ve been looking for it.”

I turned the laptop to show her. “Three transfers in the period before my mother’s will was finalized. They’re recorded as administrative expenses but the recipient accounts don’t match any vendor or service provider in the family’s records.” I pointed to the relevant lines. “Small amounts individually. Significant in aggregate. And they’ve been buried under fourteen years of subsequent accounting.”

Celeste looked at the screen for a long moment.

“She’s been doing this for fourteen years,” I said.

“Longer, possibly,” Celeste said. “This is just where I can see the edges.” She sat back. “All right. Here’s what we do.”

We spent the next two hours building an actual plan instead of reacting to one.

The account books were the foundation, pulling the full records, tracing every transfer, mapping where the money had gone and through which channels.

That was work for Celeste’s financial lawyers, people who specialized in exactly this kind of forensic accounting and could do it without alerting anyone at the family level.

But the account books alone weren’t enough. Alice was smart. Whatever paper trail existed would be minimized, redirected, given cover stories the way the nephew had a cover story.

We needed someone closer.

“Rita,” I said.

Celeste looked at me.

“Alice’s maid. She knows everything. She’s been with Alice for years.” I paused. “She was protecting Alice last night, but she was frightened. That’s not the same as loyal. A frightened person protecting someone powerful is waiting for a reason to stop.”

“You want to approach her.”

“I want to make sure she’s not disappeared before I get the chance,” I said. “Alice knows I’m looking now. If Rita becomes a liability....”

“She removes the liability,” Celeste said. “Yes.” She thought for a moment. “Kasper.”

Kasper was my cousin and also Ashthorne estate’s head of security, he was my favorite and reliable, discreet, always had my back and despised Kaelen.

He was exactly the kind of person who could watch someone without it looking like watching.

“Have him keep eyes on Rita,” I said. “Not obviously. Just close enough that she can’t be gotten to without us knowing.”

Celeste was already reaching for her phone.

While she made the call, I went downstairs.

Alice was in the morning sitting room.

She had positioned herself in the armchair nearest the window, a position of gentle vulnerability, soft light, the visual grammar of a woman who had been through something difficult. She had changed into pale colors. Her hair was arranged softly. Rita sat a step behind her with the expression of someone doing their best to look normal while internally managing multiple kinds of fear.

I sat down across from them.

“Good morning, Alice,” I said.

She looked at me with the expression she had decided on, hurt but forgiving, the magnanimity of someone who had been wronged and was choosing not to dwell on it.

“Good morning, Rowena,” she said gently. “I hope you managed to rest.”

“A little,” I said. “I wanted to apologize for disturbing you last night. I thought I heard something and I reacted before thinking. I’m sorry for frightening you.”

The apology landed exactly where I intended it to.

Alice’s expression softened with the particular warmth of someone who had been bracing for a fight and found none.

“Of course,” she said. “You’ve been through so much. It’s completely understandable.”

I smiled. She smiled.

Rita looked between us with the cautious eyes of someone watching two people be polite at each other and understanding that neither of them meant a word of it.

Smart woman.

I caught her gaze for just a moment, briefly and neutrally. Not threatening.

I see you, I meant it to say. I’m not going away.

She looked back at Alice immediately. But her hands, folded in her lap, had tightened.

That was enough for now.

I excused myself after ten minutes, went back upstairs, and texted Kasper directly: Rita. Guest wing. Don’t let her out of range.

His response came in forty seconds: Understood.

I set the phone down and looked at the account records still open on my laptop.

Fourteen years of small careful thefts, hidden under the surface of a family that trusted each other and didn’t look too closely.

I would deal with Alice with everything in me.