A leading role in my foundation. Focused on authenticity, restoration, truth—your father’s favorite words, remember? Think of it as preserving his legacy. Or rewriting it.
Penelope scoffed. Valentina had never cared about her father or his legacy. The nerve of her to invoke authenticity and truth.
She crumpled the letter, stuffed it into her pocket, and stepped inside. Dropping the rest of her mail on the console table near the door, she tossed Valentina’s missive into the small trash bin tucked beneath it.
Penelope froze when her gaze fell on a manila envelope with her mother’s handwriting. She grabbed it and tore it open.
A sticky note curled at the edge:Please be careful, sweetheart. It clung to the top of her father’s notes.
“Finally,” Penelope mumbled. After a few quick steps, she collapsed onto her couch and leafed through the pages.
The first few were mostly regular: lists of itineraries, intake dates, decision dates, notes. Penelope was halfway through when the tone changed. Her father’s handwriting grew sharper, harder, laced with frustration. Underlined questions jumped out: shell companies, suspect provenances, and the name Barry Whitfield.
The name tugged at her memory. She’d seen it recently but couldn’t place it.
She pulled out her laptop, fingers flying across the keys.
It didn’t take long. Whitfield was listed as the Acquisitions Director at Belgrave Trust.
She sat straighter.
A second search led her to an older article buried in an industry archive:Barry Whitfield Joins Belgrave Trust After Tenure at The Met.
The date… Penelope checked again.
Two months before her father’s arrest.
Her pulse thrummed in her ears.
Coincidence? Maybe. But probably not.
She leaned back, staring at the screen. Her father had worked closely with Whitfield—trusted him. If Whitfield had been involved in whatever brought him down…had he played a role in protecting Valentina? Or was he just another opportunist, slipping away before the fallout?
And if Whitfield was tied to Valentina, and then landed at Belgrave…did that mean Belgrave and Valentina were connected?
She only knew Belgrave as a mid-tier fund: reputable enough to get invited to major galas, but never the biggest player in the room. A medium fish in a glittering pond, with some high-profile successes and plenty of discretion.
Although Whitfield’s presence didn’t guarantee Belgrave Trust was involved, these people tended to travel in tight, shadowed circles.
Belgrave was now on her radar. And the thread between them? Worth tugging—and maybe even bringing up with Lucia and Francesca.
Penelope almost dozed off, and without Fuller jumping into her lap, headbutting her chest and asking for treats, she might have. Her dreams would have been full of shadowy figures and paintings bleeding into each other. She tended to have bizarre, abstract dreams tied to whatever she’d hyperfocused on before falling asleep.
“Thanks, baby. That dream would have sucked.” She petted Fuller, rising to give her treats, while her mind once more drifted to dark eyes and a smile that promised trouble.
Lucia, herMadonna, and the way she’d looked at Penelope when saying good-bye replayed in her mind.
Penelope didn’t enjoy preoccupations with people. Too complicated and messy most of the time, and the effort and potential fallout never seemed to balance the benefits enough for her to bother.
Then along came Lucia.
Isn’t there a movie or a book with that? Along came… someone? A song?
She tried to push away thoughts of what it would mean to let Lucia into her orderly, well-functioning world. The last time she’d bothered had ended in stale disappointment.
Although, considering she’d just decided to help one band of criminals topple the other, her world likely wasn’t that well-functioning after all.
Did you ever reallychooseto let people in, or did they just walk inside and make themselves comfortable? That was surely how this thing with Lucia was playing out. And while Luciahadn’t forced her way in, no compulsion pushed Penelope to evict her either.
