Chapter 1 - THE BLOODSTAINED TABLECLOTH
Rachel Monroe had worked at Luca Bellandi’s Chicago estate for only seventeen days when an engagement dinner exposed a secret buried inside the family for more than a decade.
During the dinner, Luca’s elderly aunt Margaret was injured in the conservatory after confronting his fiancée, Celeste Vaughn, about a mysterious cream envelope. Rachel discovered Celeste’s gold button stuck to the bloodstained tablecloth, while longtime butler Samuel Price desperately tried to make her burn the evidence.
Luca noticed.
His quiet questions revealed that Celeste had lied about where she had been when Margaret was hurt. Celeste then tried to frame Rachel for stealing jewelry she had never even owned.
A search of Rachel’s room uncovered a planted key leading to an abandoned wine cellar beneath the mansion, where Luca discovered surveillance equipment monitoring his family.
Through the cameras, they overheard Celeste speaking with a mysterious man who ordered Margaret removed and called Rachel dangerous.
Then Samuel appeared with Margaret’s missing envelope.
Inside was a photograph of Luca’s supposedly dead father standing beside Rachel’s mother and a newborn child.
Written across it were the words:
KEEP THE SECOND CHILD AWAY FROM THE BELLANDIS.
Before Samuel could explain, Margaret vanished.
A man called Luca from her phone.
The voice belonged to Luca’s father—the man everyone believed had died twelve years earlier.
He demanded Rachel in exchange for Margaret’s life.
And then he revealed the impossible truth:
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Rachel Monroe was not simply the Bellandis’ new maid.
She was the reason he had disappeared.
