Chapter 121 - The Uninvited Guest
The sound of the gate bell was sharp, unexpected, and completely out of place in the morning quiet of Taormina.
No one had the address to this villa. The purchase had been executed through a blind Portuguese corporation managed by Patrice’s private legal counsel in Lisbon, and the utilities were registered under a corporate shell based in Valletta. Even the local delivery drivers left packages at the village square down the hill.
Patrice appeared at the French doors, wiping her hands on a linen apron, her eyebrows drawn together in immediate suspicion.
"Are you expecting someone, Martha?"
"No," I replied, standing up slowly from the wrought-iron chair. "Not a soul."
Patrice reached into the pocket of her cardigan, her hand resting naturally on the small, discreet defensive tool she never traveled without. "Stay here. I’ll check the intercom."
"No," I said, walking toward the stone archway that led to the front courtyard. "If forty years of Arthur’s nonsense taught me anything, it’s that looking trouble in the eye is the only way to kill it."
We walked together down the gravel path, flanked by blooming lemon trees, toward the heavy iron gates that separated the private drive from the narrow mountain road.
Standing on the other side of the wrought iron was not an Italian courier, not a Swiss investigator, and certainly not Caleb.
It was a young girl, perhaps twelve years old, wearing a faded navy blue duffel coat and carrying a scuffed leather satchel. She had thick dark hair tied back in a messy braid, pale skin, and a set of sharp, familiar hazel eyes that stopped my breath in my throat.
Behind her, parked under the shade of an olive tree, sat a dusty Fiat with Rome plates. The driver remained inside, the engine idling quietly.
The girl took a step closer to the iron bars, looking directly at me through the metal scrollwork. She didn't look frightened; she looked exhausted, determined, and entirely too old for her years.
"Martha Vance?" the girl asked, her voice carrying a faint, unmistakable New England cadence beneath an accent that sounded faintly French.
"I am Martha," I said, my voice steady, though my heart suddenly thumped with an icy foreboding. "Who are you, child?"
The girl reached into the scuffed leather satchel, pulled out a thick manila envelope sealed with red electrical tape, and slid it through the iron bars of the gate.
"My name is Clara," she said quietly. "My mother told me to find you if the Zurich accounts were ever liquidated."
"Who is your mother?" Patrice demanded, stepping forward.
May you like
The girl looked at me with those piercing hazel eyes—the exact same eyes my mother had carried, the exact same eyes that looked back at me from every Pendleton portrait hanging in the old library in Maine.
"Her name is Sarah," Clara replied. "She's Eleanor's real daughter. And she told me to tell you that Arthur and Eleanor didn't steal the money from you, Aunt Martha. They stole it from *us*—and the people who actually own that sixty million euros just landed in Catania."
