Chapter 12 - ROSE VALE
Adrian could not speak.
Rose lowered the rifle.
Twenty-four years separated the woman in his memories from the woman standing before him.
Her hair had turned silver.
A scar crossed the left side of her neck.
Yet her eyes remained unchanged.
“You let me mourn you.”
Rose’s face tightened.
“I watched Victor place guards around you.”
“I believed he would kill you if I returned.”
“You could have trusted me.”
“You were seventeen.”
“I stopped being seventeen a long time ago.”
Rose accepted the anger without defending herself.
Nora closed the study door.
“Victor has Lily.”
Rose nodded.
“He contacted me an hour ago.”
“He wants the original ledgers.”
“Do you have them?”
“Yes.”
Rose opened a hidden compartment beneath the desk.
Inside were three thick accounting books and a small digital recorder.
The ledgers documented twenty years of stolen donations, fraudulent medical contracts, and payments to corrupt officials.
The recorder contained conversations between Victor, Brand, Marcus, and Dr. Warren.
“Why did Isabelle divide the evidence?”
“She knew one set could be destroyed.”
Rose looked at Adrian.
“Your wife was braver than all of us.”
Adrian struggled to control his voice.
“She died because you asked her to help you.”
“She died because Victor chose murder.”
Rose removed a map of the abandoned Vale silver mine.
Victor had converted part of it into a private storage site.
The mine contained two entrances.
Victor expected Rose to enter through the eastern tunnel with the ledgers.
A collapsed ventilation shaft provided another route.
Nora examined the map.
“I can fit through it.”
Adrian immediately refused.
“The passage is unstable.”
“Lily is inside.”
“So is Victor.”
“That is why he will watch you.”
Nora pointed to the western shaft.
“He will not watch the maid.”
Rose looked at her carefully.
“Your mother said the same thing once.”
Nora’s expression changed.
“You knew her?”
“She saved my life.”
Rose opened a drawer.
Inside was a photograph of Rose, Isabelle, and Nora’s mother standing together.
On the back were three words.
“The White Rose Pact.”
Rose explained that the white rose had not originally represented Celeste.
It had been the symbol of three women gathering evidence against Victor.
Celeste had worn the flower because Victor wanted Isabelle to know the pact had been betrayed.
Adrian finally understood.
May you like
Celeste had never entered his life by accident.
She had been sent to replace Isabelle before Isabelle was even dead.
