Rosalie would have rather driven her own car, but she had no illusions about her well-being. She was not safe. So she allowed a car and driver to take her to the office. But first, Rosalie couldn’t forget this morning’s priority. Before heading to San Francisco, she had the driver take her to downtown Blushing Green so that she could send her work laptop back to Dennis Hasterick’s office and be done with him forever. The driver parked in front of the Mailbox Spot as she went inside to pack the laptop. She paid almost a hundred dollars to have the package overnighted, addressing it to the attention of Savannah Neely, Dennis’s secretary. Unlike her boss, Savannah could be trusted. Rosalie also made sure the package would be signed for and a delivery receipt sent to her personal email.
Once that task was complete, she could rest a little easier and spend more time actively thinking about her next course of action—finding James Hague or Gerald Rehnquist as well as bracing herself for the dreaded day of playing the role of chairman of Sterling Family Enterprises. Now that they were on the way to San Francisco, Rosalie rested her head on the seat and let the two worries battle each other for her full attention.
As it turned out, she found herself preoccupied with memories of having sex with Chance. He had made her feel so desired, so completely like a woman. And she wanted more of what he gave her last night—a lot more. Rosalie yawned and closed her eyes. It was after four a.m. when Chance had climaxed for the final time. He held her against him, and she had wished that she could sink into his body and let her heart become one with his. She had fallen asleep with those overwhelming and scary feelings. Then they woke up at ten a.m. They had gotten less than six hours of sleep.
Rosalie yawned again and let herself drift off.
“Ma’am,” the driver said.
Her eyes popped open. “Yes.”
“We’re here.”
She sat up and looked out the windows. They had made it to the parking garage of the Archer building.
Rosalie’s pulse started racing, but she told herself that she could do it. Her head felt light above her shoulders as she said goodbye to the driver and walked to the private elevator. When the doors opened, a big, burly security guard said good morning and welcomed her in. After she returned the greeting, they rode in silence to the executive elevator, which went straight to the twenty-fifth floor. Rosalie kept reminding herself to breathe. She was about to see all that she would be responsible for, and it terrified her.
The bell dinged, and the doors rolled up. “Have a great day,” she said with a slight smile.
The security guard nodded once.
Rosalie’s steps were tentative as she walked out and looked around. No one sat behind the reception desks. People weren’t walking the hallways or sitting on the furniture.
“Mr. Leo Sterling is waiting for you in room twelve,” the security guard said.
Rosalie jumped, startled. She hadn’t even noticed he had exited the elevator. With her hand over her heart, she asked, “Leo Sterling?” She had hoped that repeating the name would jog her memory, and it did. Leo Sterling had been mentioned in the contract paperwork as someone Edna wanted to head Business and Operations.
Rosalie still felt as if her head weren’t attached to her body as she walked. How could she have forgotten? She had meant to ask Chance if he knew Leo Sterling. Rosalie rounded the corner. The farther she went, the less bothered by the emptiness she became. The environment felt like a blank canvas. Where the brothers had brought chaos, Edna had entrusted Chance, Leo, and her to restore order. That was a tall order to fill. So she sucked it up, banished the fear, and acted as if she wanted to do it, could do it, and had to do it.
When she made it to room twelve, the door was open. That was a good sign. Things felt even better when she stepped in the doorway and a young, handsome man wearing a sleek gray suit stood and walked from behind the desk to greet her.
“Hello. You must be Rosalie,” he said.
She shook his hand. “Yes, and you’re Leo Sterling?”
His smile was genuine. “Indeed I am.”
Rosalie was waiting for him to explain his last name, but of course he wouldn’t without being directly asked. He looked at her as if studying every inch of her face, and she was sure he hadn’t realized what he was doing.
“So what’s going on is crazy, huh?” she said to get the conversation moving.
Leo’s happy expression faded into one of heaviness. “Yes.” He nodded. “I’m praying for Grandmother’s safe return.”
“Oh, Grandmother?” Rosalie asked. Her exclamation captured her faux surprise.
He raised one side of his mouth in a lopsided smile. “You’ve never heard of me, have you?”
“No.” Rosalie shrugged. “But I hadn’t known anything about Chance until last Thursday. You can only imagine how that went.”
“Chance knows me, though.”
Rosalie cocked her head. “He does?”
He pointed at the chair across from him. “Have a seat, and I’ll fill you in.”
Rosalie made herself as comfortable as she could. She raised her eyebrows, signaling that she was ready to hear whatever he had to say.
“Baylor Andrew Sterling is my father,” he said.
Rosalie felt her face collapse into a deep frown. She knew Baylor had a mess-load of kids, and she thought he had brought some to the meeting on Saturday. Rosalie was positive Leo wasn’t one of them; she would’ve remembered him. However, now that he mentioned his father, she was cautious. Baylor was the craftiest of the four. The guy would totally enlist his estranged offspring to win the top seat.
Leo winked at her. “I’m going to answer that look on your face.”
Rosalie chuckled and raised her eyebrows. “Baylor. The worst of them all.”
He grunted cynically. “Oh, I know.”
“Then you know him?”
“I know him very well. First let me explain how I came to be his son.”
She got extra comfortable in her seat. “Okay.”
“So my mom rolled the dice.”
“Rolled the dice?”
“Baylor Sterling was a married man, and she was young and in need of love. My mother had a fantasy that he would leave his wife and start a family with her. But he didn’t. So she shot herself in the head.” He pressed his lips together.
Rosalie pressed a hand over her heart. “I’m sorry.”
“My life is a long story, but I’ll cut it short for the sake of getting down to business.”
He smiled, but she could see the depth of sadness behind his outwardly content disposition.
“You don’t have to say more,” she said, despite the fact that she wanted to know more.
“Yes, I do. Because I need you to trust me.”
She smiled faintly. “Okay,” she barely said.
“I was incubated in my dead mother’s womb, and a week before they took her off life support, I was born. A family adopted me. But for as long as I can remember, Grandmother would visit me almost every weekend. I would also spend a month with her during the summer at her house in Nantucket. I used to think she lived there.”
“Right, Edna does have a vacation home on Nantucket,” she said.
He nodded. “When I became a teenager, she told me how my mother died.”
“Did she tell you who killed her?”
He frowned with sad eyes as he shook his head. He took a deep breath and said, “But Edna has been here for me my entire life.”
Rosalie had a long list of questions for Leo, but it wasn’t her place to ask. “Wow.” She sighed. “What a story.”
Leo took a deep breath and drummed a happy beat on the desktop. “Now that that’s out of the way”—he grinned—“it’s time for the big ending.”
She flinched. “There’s more?”
“I told you that Baylor knows me, and so does Chance.”
Rosalie frowned, confused, as she nodded.
“Hello, Bernard,” Chance said.
Rosalie quickly turned to face the doorway. Her mouth fell open. She faced Leo. “You’re Bernard Kent?”
“Yes, at least that’s how everyone here knows me.”
Chance’s head flinched back slightly. “That’s how everybody here knows you? What do you mean by that?” he asked.
Chance sat silently as Leo explained to him all that he’d told Rosalie. She so wanted to know what Chance was thinking. Only the pinched skin between his eyes gave her a clue that he was confused and disturbed, as he should’ve been.
Chance shook his head. “Nothing surprises me about this family of ours.”
Rosalie couldn’t tell whether Chance was angry that his family was so screwed up or had accepted that anything was possible.
Leo sat paralyzed in his seat. She wondered how old he was, perhaps in his early thirties.
“I’m sorry, Chance. I’ve always wanted to tell you the truth, but with Baylor and the others…”
“I understand,” Chance said. Then he cleared his throat, readjusted in his seat, and extended his hand. “So I guess we’ll be working together, cousin?”
Leo leaned toward Chance and hesitated. “That’s it. You’re not angry?”
“When it comes to this family, anything’s possible. So no, I’m not angry.”
Leo shook Chance’s hand. “Thank you for not making me grovel.” His chuckle was tempered with nervousness, perhaps because Chance hadn’t yet relaxed that pucker of skin between his eyes.
“So how long will it take us to have the entire operation up and running?” Chance asked.
Leo readjusted in his seat. “Not long. We can be operational by this afternoon.” His tone was all business.
Chance nodded as if he liked the sound of that. Rosalie sat back and listened to them make plans to first hire back the IT department then everyone else. The more the two men talked, the more Rosalie’s mind wandered. Finally, she stood and excused herself. She would have sworn Chance wanted to kiss her on her way out, but instead they squeezed each other’s hands before she went off to find Edna’s office, which now belonged to her.
Rosalie had been sitting in Edna’s big chair for some time, just staring out into the hallway. She felt trapped, but Chance and Leo had been working together like a well-oiled machine. Rosalie sighed and swayed back and forth in her executive armchair. How in the world was she going to make it through day by day?
Suddenly Rosalie’s cell phone rang. She took her phone out of her purse and read the screen. Her eyes widened, and her hand flew to her chest. It was her brother.
“Hey, Norman,” she said.
“Hey, Rose. How are you?”
She smiled. “Better now that you called. How about you?”
“Well,” he said with a sigh, “I’m at a house here in San Francisco, and my victim is tied to the Sterlings. I heard the grandmother is missing, and I’m not sure if my murder is connected to her disappearance. Mom said you were in Blushing Green.”
She scooted to the edge of her seat. “Actually I’m in San Francisco at the moment.”
“Oh yeah? Have you ever heard of a guy named Liam Roberts?”
She hummed as she reached deep into her memory bank. The name sounded familiar. “Wait a second,” she said and jumped out of her seat. She was looking for Chance, who had relocated to Baylor’s office.
Chance was sitting behind the desk, peering at his computer, when Rosalie rushed into his office and stopped in front of his desk.
“Liam Roberts,” she said, breathing heavily. “Does that name ring a bell?”
“Liam Roberts, Charles Wentworth, Carolyn Edmonds, and Christine Valdez. They’re my grandfather’s illegitimate children.”
Rosalie repeated for Norman what Chance had just told her.
“Do you have proof of that?” Norman asked.
“Actually we do.”