Chapter 10 Ten
IDALIA
I did not say thank you. I did not acknowledge him at all.
I simply walked past him. The bastard didn’t deserve an unecessary word from me, and I wished I could make him pay for the things he did to me. But maybe that could come later. Right now, I had people to handle, people to remind that I was back.
The heavy double doors to the drawing room were partially open. I stopped just outside the wooden frame. I stood perfectly still and looked inside, completely unobserved.
The large room was bathed in warm, golden afternoon sunlight pouring through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It illuminated the expensive, deeply colored Persian rugs and the polished antique mahogany furniture.
Elena and Camilla sat on opposite ends of a plush, dark velvet sofa. They were drinking Earl Grey tea from delicate, gold-rimmed porcelain cups. Elena wore a dark emerald silk dress that clung to her aging frame. Her neck was heavily draped in real pearls. Camilla wore a light pink silk blouse tucked into white trousers.
She looked incredibly polished. She looked like the perfect, wealthy society daughter waiting to inherit the world. They were talking quietly, laughing softly at some private, exclusive joke. They looked so incredibly peaceful. They looked exactly like women who did not have a brutal, bloody murder weighing on their dark consciences.
I pushed the door open the rest of the way. The heavy wood smoothly opening on its brass hinges.
Both women looked up immediately. The laughter died instantly on their lips as they stared at me.
I stepped fully into the room without a word. I simply stood there, absorbing their physical reaction to my presence. I saw the immediate, harsh flash of annoyance in Elena's eyes. She absolutely hated intruders. She hated anyone who interrupted her perfectly curated, artificial reality, especially one that seemed richer than her.
But then, as her eyes traveled up my body, the annoyance shifted abruptly. It turned into a sharp, calculating, and undeniable intimidation.
With my chin was held high. I let my cold, storm-grey eyes sweep slowly over the entire room before finally, disdainfully, settling directly on them.
Camilla shifted uncomfortably on the velvet cushions. I watched her dark eyes dart frantically over the cut of my suit, the flash of my watch, the red soles of my shoes. I watched her instinctual, visceral reaction. Next to my sharp, modern, aggressive elegance, her soft pink silk blouse suddenly looked incredibly plain. She looked like a little girl playing dress-up in her mother's closet.
I could literally see the sudden, sharp spike of deep-rooted insecurity twisting her pretty features. She hated any woman who walked into a room and effortlessly stole the oxygen, just like her mother who had taught her that.
"Excuse me," Elena said abruptly. She set her porcelain teacup down on the silver serving tray with a sharp, aggressive clink. She stood up. She tried to project authority, pulling her shoulders back, but her voice wavered slightly under my steady, predatory gaze. "Who are you? How did you get in here? This is a private residence."
I did not answer her right away. I took two slow, deliberately measured steps into the center of the room. I wanted them to feel the heavy, suffocating weight of the silence. I wanted them to feel incredibly small.
"Your staff let me in," I said evenly. My voice was smooth as glass, carrying absolutely no trace of the terrified, broken girl they once knew. "I am Dr. Lia Solene."
Camilla frowned deeply. She set her cup down on her saucer as well. She stood up, crossing her arms defensively across her chest. "The new heart surgeon? The one at the hospital?"
"Yes," I answered simply, offering no further explanation.
"What are you doing in our house?" Camilla demanded. Her tone was sharp, whiny, and defensive. The ugly, petulant, spoiled child hiding beneath the expensive silk was immediately showing. "Did Thane send you here? Because if you are here to apologize for the horrible way you treated his mother today, you are completely wasting your time. You are completely out of line."
I let a slow, chilling, utterly remorseless smile touch the corners of my mouth. "I do not apologize, Camilla. And I certainly do not answer to Thane Devereux."
Camilla flinched visibly. The casual, supremely confident way I said her first name threw her completely off balance. She looked nervously at her mother. Elena was staring intensely at my face. Her brow was furrowed deeply. She was searching my features with a frantic, desperate energy.
She was trying to place the sharp shape of my jaw, the exact color of my eyes. The pieces were shifting in her calculating mind, but the picture they were forming were probably far too horrific for her to logically accept.
She would find out soon.
Before Elena could find the words to speak again, heavy, deliberate footsteps echoed loudly in the marble hallway directly behind me. The sound was incredibly distinct. The slow, rhythmic, tired tread of heavy leather soles.
"Elena, did the courier finally drop off the new estate contracts?" a deep, gravelly, incredibly weary voice called out.
It was my father. Richard Vance. The man who was mostly absent on business trips, who blindly let his cruel wife turn me into a household servant, but ironically, the only person in this massive house who ever looked at me with a single ounce of genuine human care.
He stepped into the drawing room holding a thick stack of manila folders against his chest.
But when he saw m, he stopped dead in his tracks.
The heavy folders slipped slightly in his loose grip. He looked at my back first, studying the unfamiliar white suit. Then, as I slowly turned around on my heels to fully face him, his eyes locked directly onto mine.
“You’ve gotta be shitting me.” His jaw had dropped so low now, so low it’d hit the floor if it dropped any lower.
The entire room fell into a dead, heavy, suffocating silence. The air pressure in the room seemed to vanish. You could hear the dust settling in the shafts of sunlight.
My father had aged terribly in five years. His once-brown hair was completely white now. Deep, harsh lines were carved into his face, pulling the corners of his mouth down into a permanent, exhausting state of grief. He looked exactly like a man who was going through a lot.
He stared at me. He did not blink. He did not seem to breathe. His eyes frantically traced the outline of my face. They moved from my sharp jawline, up to the curve of my nose, and finally rested on my stormy grey eyes. I stood perfectly still. I did not offer a comforting smile. I did not offer a warm greeting. I just stood tall, rigid, and elegant, holding my ground in the center of the room like a statue carved from ice.
The sheer magnitude of the shock paralyzed him. He was looking directly at a dead woman. He was looking at the daughter he was told had driven her car off a steep cliff in a fit of manic depression.
I let the heavy silence stretch out until it became physically painful. Then, out of pure, deep-rooted subconscious habit, I tilted my head slightly to the right. It was a tiny, microscopic movement. It was the exact, submissive way I used to look at him when I waited for his permission to speak at the formal dinner table.
That tiny movement hit him like a physical blow to the chest. He physically staggered backward, his shoulder hitting the wooden door frame with a loud thud. The thick manila folders slipped entirely from his hands, scattering across the rug in a chaotic, messy wave of white paper.
“No, no, no…”
“What’s going on, dad.” Camilla asked, confused.
He raised a violently trembling hand. He pointed a shaking, crooked finger directly at my face. His mouth
opened, but no sound came out at first. His chest heaved violently beneath his suit jacket.
”This can’t be real.” He finally said, his chest heaving.
Elena stepped forward quickly, deeply alarmed by her husband's intense physical reaction. "Richard? Richard, what is wrong with you? Do you know this arrogant woman?"
He completely ignored his wife. He did not even look at Camilla. His eyes remained glued to my face, wide with a terrifying, agonizing mixture of absolute shock, sheer horror, and painful, undeniable recognition.
"Idalia," he whispered.
Directly behind me, there was a sharp, strangled gasp.
Then, a loud, violent crash.
I did not turn around to look, but I knew exactly what it was. The delicate, expensive porcelain teacup in Camilla’s hand had just hit the hard marble border of the floor, shattering instantly into a hundred jagged, broken pieces.