Chapter 3 - The Hotel Confirmed The First Lie
The first man was the Bellamy Grand’s day manager.
The second was a security supervisor Rosa knew by name because she had been selling flowers outside that hotel for thirteen years.
“Ms. Rosa,” the manager said, glancing from the destroyed flower stand to Pierce’s wrinkled blazer, “is everything all right?”
“No,” Rosa said. “Mr. Pierce Halden ordered thirty arrangements for this afternoon and just tried to walk off with the largest bouquet without paying.”
The manager turned to Pierce with polite alarm.
“Sir?”
Pierce recovered just enough to straighten his jacket. “This woman attacked me.”
“You moved toward me first,” Rosa said. “And you still haven’t paid.”
Camille stepped forward before Pierce could twist it further.
“Did he place the order through the hotel?” she asked.
The manager checked the tablet in his hand.
“Yes, ma’am. Thirty floral arrangements billed to Suite Eleven-Twenty.”
Pierce cut in. “I told your staff to put it on my account.”
The manager looked confused. “Sir… that account didn’t clear.”
Camille’s face changed.
“What do you mean, didn’t clear?”
The manager swallowed. “The card we were given for the room deposit failed earlier this afternoon. We were told another form of payment would be provided before the private dinner.”
Camille stared at Pierce.
“You told me you already settled everything.”
Pierce opened his mouth, but Rosa spoke first.
“He always says that.”
Pierce rounded on her. “You don’t know me.”
Rosa looked at him for a long, steady second.
“My daughter did.”
That shut him up.
Not because of the words.
Because of the look in Rosa’s eyes when she said them.
Camille saw it too.
The tension on the sidewalk changed completely. This wasn’t about unpaid flowers anymore. It wasn’t even about a rich man embarrassing himself in public.
It was about a woman who had recognized something she had been waiting to recognize for a very long time.
Camille turned slowly back toward Rosa.
“What do you mean,” she asked, “your daughter knew him?”
Rosa’s grip tightened slightly on the red bouquet.
May you like
“She knew him under another name,” she said. “And three days after she confronted him, she was dead.”
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