“Except you couldn’t be legally married,” Owen said.
Alice shot him a stern look but it was too late. Brooke was starting to cry.
“I let myself believe everything he told me,” she whispered.
Alice took a sharp breath. “But this makes no sense. Why would a Kelbrook leave money to me?”
Owen got the familiar ping of intuition.
“Revenge,” he said, feeling his way forward. “It was no secret in the business world that the Kelbrook brothers were engaged in what amounted to a blood feud. The older brother, Hampton, never forgave Dunstan for persuading their father to bypass the firstborn male and anoint Dunstan as the heir to the Kelbrook throne.”
Alice groaned. “So I was intended to be the tool of the older brother’s beyond-the-grave vengeance? But why me?”
Brooke said, “I don’t know, but here’s the kicker. If you died, all of the shares would go to various charities. Travis said they had to keep you alive in order to maintain control of the shares.” She grimaced. “I still can’t believe that he made it all sound so…so reasonable.”
Owen walked through the logic. “Step one of the plan was to find a way to make sure Alice married into the Kelbrook family. Step two was to have her committed to the para-psych hospital and diagnosed as dangerously insane. In the eyes of the law, she was deemed to be incapable of making her own financial decisions. She was in a Covenant Marriage, so power of attorney automatically went to her husband.”
“Who supposedly jumped off the roof of the hotel the night I was kidnapped,” Alice said. “What happened to the shares?”
“We should assume that Poole was pushed off that roof,” Owen said. “It’s a good bet that at some point before he died, he signed documents that transferred his power of attorney to Dunstan Kelbrook.”
Alice shook her head. “Why didn’t they just ask me for the shares?”
Brooke looked at her as if she was not very bright.
“No one in their right mind would expect someone to hand over a controlling interest in Kelbrook Industries,” Owen said. He paused. “Let’s say no Kelbrook would expect anyone to give up that kind of power so easily.”
“They could have offered to buy them,” Alice said.
Owen shook his head. So did Brooke.
“Too risky from their point of view,” Owen said. “Those shares gave you a lot of leverage. They assumed the price would be exorbitantly high.”
To his surprise, Alice got a considering look. “Something doesn’t feel right about your logic.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?”
She moved one hand in a gracefully vague motion. “I’m not sure. Something about Travis Poole’s death and the Hotel of Dreams connection. We’re missing a piece of the puzzle, but I don’t know what that is.”
“We’ll keep investigating,” Owen promised.
Alice looked at Brooke, a sheen of tears in her eyes. “Thank you for telling me all this. I am very grateful.”
“You shouldn’t be thanking me,” Brooke said grimly. “You should be demanding to know why I didn’t try to straighten things out sooner. Why I didn’t contact the tabloids or the police.”
Owen shrugged. “You were afraid of the Kelbrooks. It was logical to keep quiet.”
“Yes,” Alice said quietly. “But that was not the only reason you stayed silent, was it, Brooke?”
“I believed what everyone else believed,” Brooke said. “What Travis told me to believe. I honestly think he believed it, too. He said you were a madwoman endowed with a monster talent. He was afraid to sleep with you or even kiss you. He said you could put him into a coma filled with nightmares and he might never wake up. All you had to do was make physical contact and rez your talent. So yes, I wanted to believe you made Travis jump off the roof of that hotel.”
“I understand,” Alice said gently.
Brooke drank some of her cappuccino and then blotted her eyes with a napkin. “I’ve been blaming you for destroying my plans to escape Illusion Town. Deep down, I knew that probably wasn’t the truth, but I needed to believe it. When I watched that damn video and saw Travis helping that thug carry you out of the hotel room, I knew I could no longer lie to myself. I should have come forward sooner.”
“It wouldn’t have done any good,” Alice said. “No one would have listened to you. I still would have been locked up in Serenity Gardens and Kelbrook probably would have taken steps to silence you. If you’re looking for my forgiveness, you have it. You are the first person to give me any useful information about my parents. I have been searching for even the smallest scraps of data my whole life. Thank you.”
She held out her hand. Brooke automatically started to reach for it and then froze. She stared at Alice’s fingers.
