I look up and recognize the street names. We’re in a section of the city close to my father’s lab. He hasn’t made any move to contact me, but I’m tired of waiting.
I check my door, but it’s locked. Kaiser isn’t taking chances that I’ll throw myself from a moving car.
And I’m supposed to be pretending I’ll be a good little wife. Get more intel.
Let his guard drop. Making him chase me through the city will set me back.
“Can we stop and see Papa?” I hold my breath, hoping he’ll say yes. So far, pretending to defer to Kaiser has still allowed me to get my way. Mostly. I’m filing everything I learn about him away so I can figure out how to manipulate him.
Kaiser says nothing, but he takes a right at the light. A few minutes later, he’s in front of LilyRose, our business’s flagship store.
“Go ahead,” he says. I don’t hesitate. I exit the car and rush into the store.
The first half is an atrium-like space, clean and airy, with a pale wood floor. I hurry past the stands that showcase glass vials of perfume and signs inviting customers to book a consultation so our staff can help them customize a signature blend. The store is mostly empty of customers, but Katya, the manager, sees me and comes over.
“Bella. How are you?”
“Hey, Katya. I was just in the area and thought I’d drop in to see Papa.”
Her eyebrows draw together. “I see. He told us he’d be working off-site for a few days. Are you able to reach him on his cell?”
“Oh yeah,” I wave a hand. “I just forgot. I’m busy with school these days.”
Her face brightens as she asks me about school. We chit chat and then I excuse myself to grab something from the store room.
Deeper in the store, the ceiling drops and the colors darken. The place is less zen and more like a luxurious den with thick Turkish rugs leading to private meeting spaces. I hear murmuring behind one door. Some employees must be in a consult. Probably Solange and Jon.
As I walk, I try my father’s cell, but it goes to voicemail. He must be working from home. Or maybe he took a trip out to one of our farms. Which is rare but not unheard of.
What I don’t like is that he didn’t tell me. He turned me over to Kaiser, told me I was going to marry him, and then left town?
Or maybe Fraternitas has him locked down. All the more reason to figure out how to free him and fight back.
I quicken my steps. I’m not heading for the storeroom but my father’s private lab.
Once I pass the employee’s spaces and the deep stockroom, the scent of roses and lily of the valley hits me. The sweet floral perfume was my mother’s signature scent. The place smells so much like her, I can imagine her rounding the corner in one of her floral kimonos. It makes my heart ache, but I welcome the pain.
I miss her.
I always wondered if Papa was aware that he was keeping Mom’s memory alive in his workplace. I don’t know why he surrounds himself with the scent of her when he can barely say her name. He doesn’t even wear his wedding ring anymore. Sometimes it’s like he doesn’t want to remember she even existed, and if I’m honest, that hurts as much as my grief.
But it’s old pain. I have bigger problems to deal with right now.
I enter my father’s office. It looks business-y but has a door that leads to an open workspace. Most people would assume my father compiles his perfumes up here in the workspace or the smaller lab. Only a few people know the truth—Papa’s main lab is in the basement, several floors below the main floor, along with his secret greenhouses.
On the far wall are a set of paintings. On the left, a watercolor of a lily and a rose. On the right, a peace lily surrounded by lavender. And in the middle, a belladonna plant growing between the trunks of two trees. They’re all signed Shoshonna B, and my mother painted them.
I touch the frame of the left painting and hesitate. If I press a certain pattern, a hidden door will open and lead me to my father’s secret lab. He might be down there, hidden from Fraternitas. Or he might be avoiding all his secret labs so as not to lead Fraternitas to them.
A phone rings in my father’s office, shattering the silence and making me jump. I wait for it to stop ringing, but as soon as it does, it starts again. It’s an old-fashioned phone, with a cord and a ring that could wake the dead.
I head back into his office and pick it up. It’s my father’s private line, coming from our house.
“Hello?”
“Belladonna.”
“Papa.” My shoulders relax, hearing his voice. I can imagine him here at his workspace, wearing his microscope goggles, the kind my mother used to tease him about. She’d pick me up, mischief sparkling in her brown eyes. “What do you think about having a Papa who looks like a bug?”
