Chapter 3 - The Secret Beneath the Mansion
Roman immediately moved Sadie into a secure room hidden behind his study.
But Sadie refused to remain there while others searched the estate.
The key, she realized, matched an old deposit box built into the mansion's original wine cellar.
Inside they discovered Evelyn's ledger.
But they found something else too.
A second photograph.
It showed Evelyn holding baby Sadie.
Standing beside them was Roman's father.
On the back were six words:
Protect our daughter at all costs.
Sadie's entire world collapsed.
Roman's father was her father too.
She and Roman shared blood—but not in the way she initially feared: Roman soon uncovered records proving his own legal father had adopted him as an infant after marrying Roman's mother. Roman and Sadie were not biologically related.
Still, the revelation changed everything.
Sadie wasn't merely an employee accidentally caught inside the Costa family's secrets.
She was part of them.
And someone had spent decades making sure she never discovered it.
Roman's jealousy over the flowers suddenly seemed insignificant compared with what came next.
The ledger identified the traitor.
Roman's trusted underboss.
The same man who had stood behind him every day for fifteen years.
Marcus Vale.
Roman refused to believe it until Sadie pointed to recent payments recorded under shell companies.
Marcus had been quietly rebuilding the conspiracy that had destroyed Evelyn's life.
The estate lockdown hadn't been designed to keep an enemy outside.
The enemy was already inside.
And when Roman opened the hidden-room door—
Marcus was waiting.
But instead of attacking them, Marcus placed a second envelope on Roman's desk.
“You've been lied to too, boss.”
Roman stared at him.
“By whom?”
Marcus looked toward Sadie.
“Her mother.”
Sadie's heart stopped.
Marcus revealed that Evelyn Bennett was alive.
Roman called him a liar.
Then Marcus produced a photograph taken only three weeks earlier.
Sadie recognized her mother immediately.
Older.
Gray-haired.
But alive.
And standing beside her was Toby.
The bakery boy who had supposedly moved upstate.
Sadie whispered his name.
Marcus nodded.
“Toby wasn't trying to date you.”
“Then why the flowers?”
Marcus looked toward Roman.
“Because something was hidden inside them.”
Roman rushed toward the kitchen.
The carnations were gone.
Except for the one he had secretly kept.
He retrieved the wilted flower from his desk.
Sadie carefully tore open its dried stem.
Something tiny fell onto Roman's palm.
A rolled strip of paper.
Three handwritten words appeared beneath the light:
May you like
DON'T TRUST ROMAN.
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