Chapter 28 The Undercover Asset
Brittany's POV
I was in the studio when Elena brought her down.
I heard them coming through the corridor, Elena's steady cane-free walk and another set of footsteps beside it, lighter, quicker, with a particular purposeful quality I recognized immediately. Some people walk like they are moving through space. Daisy had always walked like she was moving toward something specific.
The door opened.
She looked exactly the same. Same sharp eyes, same neat posture, same quality of attention that made you feel she had already assessed the room before she fully entered it. She was wearing dark trousers and a plain jacket, her hair pulled back, the name tag from her jacket already removed and tucked in her pocket. She scanned the studio in one quick sweep, taking in the fabric wall, the machines, the cutting table, and the mood board. Then she looked at me.
For a moment neither of us spoke.
Then Daisy said, "You look different."
"Different how?" I asked.
"Like yourself," she said. "You didn't look like yourself the last two years at Williams Fashion. I could never figure out exactly what was wrong until the day he threw you out and I realized you had been disappearing the whole time and none of us said anything."
The honesty of it landed cleanly. I didn't deflect it.
"Sit down," I said. "We have a lot to cover."
Elena set a tray of tea on the corner of the cutting table, gave Daisy one long evaluating look that apparently satisfied her, and left, pulling the door closed behind her.
Daisy sat on the stool across the cutting table from me. She put her laptop bag on the floor beside her feet and folded her hands on the table and waited. That was one of the things I had always valued about her. She didn't fill silence with noise.
"How much did David's people tell you?" I asked.
"The broad shape," she said. "Adam and Bianca. The fraud. The bigamy. The connection to the Blackwell brothers. They told me you needed someone inside the house and asked if I was willing." She paused. "They didn't have to ask twice."
"I need to tell you the full picture before you agree to anything," I said. "Not the broad shape. Everything."
"Then tell me everything," she said.
So I did. I took her through all of it, from the moment I walked into my bedroom and found Adam and Bianca together, through the hospital and the contract and arriving at the mansion. I told her about Thomas and the surveillance network and Chloe's tea. I told her about Leo in the walls and the USB drive and the external server connecting Adam to the Blackwell brothers. I told her about the studio and my mother's sketches and the note pinned to the board in Thomas's handwriting.
Daisy listened without interrupting once. Her expression moved through the story but stayed controlled, tightening in certain places, going very still in others. When I finished she was quiet for a moment.
"He's been watching you inside this house," she said. "Through the brothers' cameras."
"For eleven weeks," I said.
Her jaw tightened. "That explains the phone call."
"What phone call?"
"Three weeks ago Adam called me," Daisy said. "I didn't answer, but he left a voicemail. He said he knew where I was and that I should think carefully about my loyalties." She looked at me steadily. "He knew my location. I had been careful, but he knew anyway. Now I understand how."
I nodded. "He was pulling information from the surveillance network."
"Right," she said. She took a breath. "Okay. What do you need from me?"
I laid it out clearly and completely, the way I used to brief her on a new collection's requirements at the start of a season. The false reference David's team had prepared, the cover identity, the position as a housekeeper in Adam and Bianca's new property in River Oaks. What I needed her to find and document. The marriage certificates. The children's birth records. Any financial communication between Adam and the Blackwell brothers. And most critically, any record of my original designs, anything with my handwriting, my dates, my authorship marks.
Daisy listened without blinking.
When I finished she asked her three questions.
"What's my exit protocol if I'm compromised?"
"Leo monitors a burner signal you carry at all times. One text gets a response within four minutes. David has a team on standby."
"How long do I have inside the house before the timeline closes?"
"Six weeks maximum. Possibly less if things accelerate on our end."
"Does Bianca know what I look like?"
"She saw you twice at Williams Fashion events," I said. "Both times you were in a group and she wasn't paying attention to staff. David's team has prepared a different hair color and a name change for the application."
Daisy nodded slowly after each answer, processing, filing.
Then she said, "When do I start?"
"Tomorrow," I said. "The application goes in this afternoon through David's placement agency. The reference is already in the system. Based on what we know about their current household staff situation, they need someone quickly."
Daisy nodded once, decisively, the nod of someone closing a decision and moving immediately to execution. She picked up her laptop bag and stood.
"I'll need two hours this afternoon to review the cover file and memorize the reference history," she said. "And I want to walk through the exit protocol with Leo directly before I go in."
"I'll arrange it," I said.
She moved toward the door. I watched her cross the studio, past the fabric wall, past the machines, and I felt the particular kind of gratitude that doesn't have a comfortable way to express itself, so it just sits in your chest and makes everything feel more serious.
"Daisy," I said.
She stopped and turned back.
"He fired you because you were loyal to me," I said. "I know that. I should have said something about it a long time ago."
She looked at me for a moment. "You were disappearing," she said simply. "You didn't have enough of yourself left to protect anyone else. That wasn't your fault." She paused at the doorway. "Brittany. There's something else you should know."
"Tell me," I said.
"Adam has a new collection dropping in six weeks," she said. "He's been talking about it publicly for two months. He's calling it his masterpiece. The global press announcement is already scheduled, venue booked, international press confirmed." Her voice was level but her eyes were not. "He's using your last designs. The ones from your final sketchbook. He's presenting them as the culmination of his entire creative career."
The studio was very quiet.
I turned slowly and looked at the mood board. My mother's sketches across the top, preserved and extraordinary. My own new drawings pinned below them, sharp and alive and building toward something that had no ceiling.
I looked at them for a long moment.
Then I said, "Then we have six weeks to build something that will make his masterpiece look like a forgery."
I turned back to face her.
"Because that's exactly what it is."