February though? Not so much. Things at home are still fine, greateven, but Hale Cosmetics is thrown into a tailspin when a formula is stolen from Helix’s office. He and Nicolette had developed a groundbreaking new fragrance that’s worth millions, and when our competitor, Aquarius Cosmetics, applied for a patent for the exact same formula, my brother freaked the fuck out after he checked his safe and found it empty.
We have tons of cameras in the laboratory building, but the problem is the thief somehow disabled them. Everyone is perplexed because our system is supposedly state-of-the-art and unbeatable. But someone out there managed to beat it. It seems someone pulled off the perfect crime, and our security team is stumped.
I’m sitting in my office when the door bursts open and Helix rushes in, waving his laptop and babbling about proof and a video. Apparently, he somehow got footage we thought was lost forever.
“I’ve watched it about fifty times, and the woman looks familiar to me somehow,” he pants. “Not her face, but there’s something niggling in the back of my mind.” He places the device on my desk and opens it. “Will you watch it with me and give me your thoughts?”
“Of course,” I say soothingly as he takes a seat on the edge of my desk. I can feel his anxiety as if it were my own. I ask about Nicolette while he’s setting it up. Their relationship is currently struggling, and that breaks my heart because everyone thought they were the perfect couple.
Helix clicks on an MP4 file and directs my attention to the screen. “Watch.”
The screen is filled with a view of the hallway outside Helix’s office in the laboratory building. We’re both silent as a woman in all black approaches the camera with her head tilted down. Helix is right; there’s something familiar about the way she moves. She’s short, and despite her bulky clothing, I can see she’s quite thin.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention, though I can’t quite place why.
The woman enters the office, and I stay silent as Helix fast forwards through seven minutes of nothing. When the figure emerges, she’s holding a thick manila envelope, which she stuffs beneath hersweatshirt. A sliver of skin is revealed, and my blood cells all seem to pause mid-flow.
When a bit of platinum hair slips from her hood, she quickly hides it and jogs off toward the exit as I sit there trying to get my circulatory system to come back to life.
“Back it up,” I say around a dry tongue. “To where she puts the envelope under her shirt.”
Helix looks at me curiously and slides the little bar back a bit. “Here?”
I nod dumbly and point. “Can you zoom in right there?”
“Whoa, I didn’t even notice the tattoo,” he murmurs when the patch of skin fills the screen. “Let me see if I can clear it up a bit.”
It seems like it takes him forever, but in actuality, it’s probably only a few seconds before the ink comes into focus and I see my own name in a cursive script. I recognize it instantly because I had a similar one once, though I had it removed years ago.
“Phoenix?” my brother calls, and it sounds like his voice is coming from the bottom of a well. Or maybe I’m the one in the well and he’s trying to save me.
I manage to drag myself to the surface and look at the face that matches my own. Helix looks concerned, and I can only imagine the expression on my face right now.
“Phoenix,” he says again, “are you all right? What’s happening here?”
“I know who it is,” I tell him, my eyes going back and forth from the image to my twin.
His hand is warm on my shoulder, and I close my eyes to absorb the comfort. Because inside, my organs are hosting a rave.
“Can you tell me who it is?”
I can, but I don’t want to, though I open my mouth to say it anyway as my gaze once again focuses on the tattoo.
“That’s the woman I was going to marry,” I tell Helix, bringing my eyes back to his widening ones. “That’s Beatrice fucking Bettencourt.”
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Jailhouse confessions
Phoenix
I’ve arranged for a private visitation room at the jail. Not one of those with the glass and the phone handsets that they probably never clean. This one only has a table and two chairs. And one of those chairs is occupied by my ex-fiancée.
Beatrice looks thinner than she did the last time I saw her a little over five years ago. And apparently they haven’t allowed her to use her fancy hair products because her platinum locks hang limply on her shoulders.
Her eyes rake up and down my body when I enter. I’m wearing a black suit with an elegant black silk tie. Jordie calls it my power suit.
“Phoenix. So nice of you to drop by. I see you dressed up for me,” Beatrice says, crossing her arms over her chest.
