Chapter 10 - What Lies Beneath the Seal
Maeve’s hand hovered above the bed.
The white linen beneath the folder seemed to glow in the stark, midday light pouring through the panoramic ocean-facing glass. Outside, a lone seabird banked against the wind, crying out over the churning grey surf of Narragansett Bay, but inside the master suite, the world had shrunk to the space between her trembling fingers and the heavy manila paper.
She looked at Roman. His hand remained resting on the edge of the folder, his long fingers pale against the manila stock, his signet ring gleaming under the recessed ceiling lights. He didn't blink. He didn't push. He simply waited, radiating an immovable, crushing patience.
Behind him, Declan’s heavy breathing was audible, rhythmic and deep. Gabriel’s eyes were narrowed to slits, his head tilted at an acute angle, tracking the pulse leaping violently against the side of Maeve’s slender neck.
Maeve drew a sharp, shuddering breath through her nose.
*Clara,* she thought. *Whatever is in this, you do it for Clara.*
She extended her right hand, her fingers brushing against the cold, smooth cardboard of the folder.
She reached for the black elastic band securing the contents, preparing to slide it over the corner. But as her fingers slipped beneath the upper edge of the cover, her knuckles brushed against something solid—something thick, rigid, and completely foreign to a standard corporate dossier.
It was tucked partially beneath the bottom edge of the folder, concealed between the manila paper and the white cotton counterpane.
Maeve froze.
Her eyes flicked down.
A corner of the hidden object protruded slightly from beneath the heavy documents. It wasn't paper. It was metallic, dark, and bore an intricate, familiar engraving—a pattern she had not seen since she was seven years old, in a house that had burned to the ground before her father ever took his first loan.
Her breath caught violently in her throat.
The defiance that had armored her through the foyer, through Declan’s temper, through the kitchen and the stairwell, shattered in an instant. The wall of stubborn indifference she had maintained like a fortress crumbled into dust.
Her expression shifted violently—first from confusion, then to stark disbelief, and finally into a wide-eyed, paralyzing wave of pure alarm.
Her hand jerked back as if she had touched red-hot iron, hovering in mid-air above the folder, trembling uncontrollably.
Her hazel eyes snapped back up to Roman Falcone’s face.
Roman did not move. His expression remained an unreadable mask of dark marble, but his obsidian eyes flicked down to her trembling hand, then slowly returned to her terror-stricken gaze. A faint, almost imperceptible shadow of a reaction crossed his jaw—not cruelty, not triumph, but the grim confirmation of a suspicion long held.
Gabriel straightened up from the doorframe, his easy posture tightening.
Declan’s arms slowly uncrossed, his combat boots shifting against the floor as the tension in the room coiled to a breaking point.
Maeve opened her mouth to speak, but the air refused to move. The name on the folder seemed to scream up from the bed, while the object tucked beneath it remained half-hidden, a lethal ghost from a past she had spent half her life running from.
Roman leaned down slightly, closing the distance between them until his voice was a private, devastating whisper meant only for her.
May you like
“Look at it, Maeve.”
The camera held tightly on Maeve Carter’s face—her pupils dilated, her chest frozen mid-breath, her features locked in sheer, unadulterated shock—while the contents of the folder, and the artifact beneath the seal, remained buried in shadow.
