The Test No One Expected
Chapter 04 - The Test No One Expected
Vivienne ordered a bedroom prepared for Elena on the second floor, but Elena refused it. She chose the small attic room where she had slept with the other staff, saying she could not climb into silk sheets while her life was still being measured in a laboratory.
Near midnight, Beatrice brought tea and found her sitting on the narrow bed with the locket open.
“You knew Amelia?” Elena asked.
Beatrice nodded. “I was a junior maid when she was young. She hated formal dinners, escaped through kitchen doors, and once served the staff herself because she said no one should eat cold food after feeding rich people all night.”
Elena smiled despite herself.
“She fell in love with Samuel Marlowe, a pianist hired for one of the winter balls. Mrs. Hawthorne objected at first. Not because he was poor, though Amelia believed that. It was because Gregory Vale told her Samuel was after the family money.”
“Was he?”
“No. He refused every offer to leave Amelia.”
Beatrice looked toward the locked east wing. “The night Amelia disappeared, she came through the kitchen crying. She said someone had been moving money through the family charities. She planned to expose it after the baby was born.”
“Someone?”
“She never said the name. She only told me that if anything happened, I should remember the blue swallow.”
Elena closed the locket. “Why did you never tell Vivienne?”
“I tried. Gregory intercepted every message. By the time he died, I had no proof and Mrs. Hawthorne had built walls around her grief.”
Downstairs, those walls were shifting.
In the library, Regina poured brandy with an unsteady hand while Celeste paced.
“If the test is positive, she gets everything,” Celeste said.
“Not automatically.”
“Grandmother was going to name me tonight.”
Regina seized her daughter’s wrist. “Listen carefully. You were raised for this family. You sat beside Vivienne through surgeries, funerals, and board wars. That maid has a necklace and a convenient birthday. Nothing more.”
“And if she has the blood?”
Regina’s eyes hardened. “Blood is only powerful when people believe it deserves power.”
At two in the morning, she sent a message from a private phone to a number saved without a name.
Find the original St. Agnes file before Reed does.
The reply came one minute later.
Too late. Someone already removed it from storage.
May you like
Regina stared at the screen.
Across the mansion, inside the pocket of an old housekeeper’s robe, a brass key waited for the door to the east wing.
