Chapter 2

"# Chapter 2: The Castle in Scotland

The envelope arrived on a Tuesday, wrapped in brown paper and smelling of rain. My grandmama used to say trouble always comes on a Tuesday. She also said never trust a man who parts his hair on the left. Daniel parted his on the right, so I thought I was safe. I was wrong about both.

The private investigator's name was Frank Delgado. I'd found him through a woman in Baton Rouge who specialized in finding dead husbands who weren't dead. She charged double for Kentucky cases. I paid without blinking.

Frank didn't write letters. He sent photographs and a single typed page. I opened the envelope at my kitchen table, the same table where Daniel and I ate cereal on our first morning as man and wife. The coffee was still hot. I wished it was whiskey.

The first photo showed a man in rubber boots standing in front of a copper still the size of a small house. He had Daniel's jaw. Daniel's shoulders. Daniel's habit of tilting his head when he was about to tell a lie. His hair was lighter, cropped short, and he'd grown a beard the color of rust. But I knew those hands. I'd watched them button a thousand shirts. I'd watched them close a casket lid at his own funeral.

My fingers went numb. The photo slipped onto the table, face down.

The second photo was the one that burned. A castle, gray stone, flags snapping in a wind I could almost feel. In the foreground, a woman with red hair and a sharp chin held a glass of amber liquid to the light. She was laughing. Daniel stood behind her, arms around her waist, chin resting on her shoulder. He looked happy. Genuinely happy. The way he'd looked at me once, before the money and the lies and the coldness crept in like frost on a window.

The typed page was brief. Frank didn't waste words.

Subject alive. Goes by Daniel MacAllister. Married to Isla MacAllister, daughter of the MacAllister whiskey family. Controls 60% of MacAllister Distilling. Resides at Inverloch Castle, Scotland. No children. Subject's brother visits quarterly for business.

His brother. Rhett.

I set the page down. The coffee had gone cold. The kitchen felt smaller, like the walls were leaning in to hear my next thought.

Rhett knew.

The day of Daniel's funeral, Rhett stood at the back of the church, hands clasped in front of him, not crying. He didn't speak at the graveside. He held my elbow when my knees buckled, and he didn't say a word when I pulled away. He'd been there every day after. Bringing casseroles from the church ladies. Fixing the loose porch step. Sitting in my living room in silence, watching me not eat, not sleep, not live.

I'd thought he was grieving his brother. I'd thanked him for being strong when I couldn't be.

Now I saw it different. Rhett had known. Rhett had stood at that grave and watched them lower an empty casket, and he'd never said a single word.

I picked up the phone. My hands were steady now. That's the thing about rage. It settles you. It gives your bones something to hold onto.

He answered on the first ring. "Wren."

"Rhett." I didn't ask him how he was. I didn't ask about the weather in Scotland. I said, "Tell me about Inverloch Castle."

The silence stretched so long I thought the line had gone dead. Then he exhaled, slow and deliberate, the way he did when he was choosing his words. "It's old. Stone. Built in the 1400s. The distillery is in the east wing."

"That's not what I asked."

"I know."

"Your brother is alive."

Another silence. Then, quiet, "I know."

I wanted to scream. I wanted to throw the phone through the window. Instead I sat down, because my knees had decided to betray me after all. "How long?"

"Since the beginning."

"You helped him."

"No." His voice was hard, harder than I'd ever heard it. "I didn't help him. I found out six months ago. The day before the funeral. He called me from a burner phone. Told me if I said anything, he'd make sure you ended up with nothing. No money. No house. Nothing. He said he'd ruin you the way he ruined our father."

"Your father is dead."

"Yes. Daniel killed him too. Not with a car accident. With the paperwork. Father found out about the Scotland operation. He was going to cut Daniel out of the will. Daniel got to him first. Stressed him into a heart attack. That's what the doctors said. I know better."

I closed my eyes. The kitchen smelled like coffee and old grief. "Why are you telling me this now?"

"Because you found out anyway. And because I'm tired of standing at graves for men who aren't dead."

"You stood at my husband's grave."

The line went quiet. Then, so soft I almost missed it, "I stood at your husband's grave. But I've been standing at yours for six years."

My heart stumbled. I ignored it. "You need to tell me everything. The company. The shares. The will. All of it."

"Your father-in-law left you 40% of Ashford Whiskey. Daniel controls 30% through a shell company. I have 15. The rest is scattered among minor shareholders. If you and I combine our shares, we outvote him. But he doesn't know about your stake. He thinks father left it all to me."

"How does he think that?"

"Because I lied for you." He said it flat, like a fact, not a favor. "I told Daniel you got a small settlement and a house. I told him you were broken. That you were drowning. That you wouldn't be a problem."

"I am broken," I said. "But I'm not drowning. And I'm not a problem. I'm a consequence."

I heard him breathe in. Out. "Wren. What are you planning?"

"He's coming home." I said it like a prayer and a curse in one breath. "The funeral for your father is Saturday. He'll be there to claim his inheritance and play the grieving son. He doesn't know I know. He thinks I'm a widow with a broken heart and a small house in Kentucky."

"He'll find out."

"Not until I want him to."

"You don't know him like I do. He's patient. He's cruel. He'll watch you. Test you. He'll try to get you alone."

"Let him." I stood up. My legs were steady again. "I buried him once. I can do it again."

"Wren." His voice cracked on the first letter of my name. "You don't have to do this alone."

"I'm not alone. I have the truth. And I have you." I paused, letting the weight of it settle. "Unless you're going to warn him."

"I'm not."

"Prove it."

"How?"

"Come home. Stand next to me at your father's funeral. Look your brother in the eye and lie to him like you've been lying to me."

The silence this time was different. It was heavy. It had a shape. I could feel it pressing against my ear.

"I'll be there Thursday," he said.

"Thursday." I hung up.

The photos were still on the table. Daniel with his arms around another woman. Daniel in front of copper stills he'd built with money he'd stolen from our marriage. Daniel alive, breathing, laughing, while I'd spent six months crying into my pillow and apologizing for things I never did.

I picked up the photo of the castle. I studied the stone walls. The narrow windows. The way the flag snapped in a wind that had never touched Kentucky.

"I'm coming for you, Daniel." I said it out loud, to the empty kitchen, to the ghost of the man I'd married. "And I'm bringing your brother with me."

I folded the photos and tucked them into my bra, right against my heart. It was the only safe place I had left. Then I walked to the closet where Daniel's suits still hung, his cologne still on the collars, his lies still stitched into the lining.

I pulled out his favorite jacket. A navy blue blazer he'd worn to our courthouse wedding. I took it to the backyard, poured lighter fluid over it, and set it on fire.

The flames took their time. They curled around the sleeves first, then ate through the shoulders. The smell was acrid and sweet and wrong. I watched until it was nothing but ash and a few brass buttons that had melted into pools of gold.

I called Frank Delgado back. He answered with a grunt.

"Frank. I need one more thing."

"Name it."

"I need the name of the woman he married. And I need proof she's not just a wife. I need proof she's a target."

A beat. "You think he's going to do to her what he did to you?"

"I think Daniel collects women the way he collects distilleries. He uses them until they're empty, then he burns them down. I'm not going to let her be next."

"That's not your job."

"It is now." I looked at the ash pile. The last of Daniel's jacket was curling into a blackened crisp. "I'm done being the widow. I'm done being the fool. I'm done being the woman who buries a man who's laughing in another country with another wife."

"So what are you?"

I smiled. It felt like cracking ice. "I'm the reckoning."

I hung up before he could ask another question. The sun was setting, orange and pink bleeding across the Kentucky sky. In Scotland, it would be morning. Daniel would be waking up next to Isla MacAllister. He'd drink coffee, maybe take a walk through his castle, maybe smile at the thought of the empty grave he'd left behind in Louisville.

He didn't know. Not yet.

But he would.

The funeral was in five days. I'd need a black dress. I'd need a steel spine. I'd need to look into the eyes of the man I'd loved and not flinch when I handed him the knife.

I went inside and poured myself a glass of whiskey. Daniel's favorite brand, from his father's private stock. I raised it to the empty room.

"To the widows," I said. "And to the women who get to write the ending themselves."

I drank it down. It burned. I liked that.

Then I opened my laptop and started typing notes. Every name. Every date. Every lie. I filled page after page. When I ran out of things I knew, I started writing the things I suspected. Daniel's shell company. His Scottish connections. The way he'd made himself untouchable across an ocean.

I stopped at midnight. My eyes were dry. My hands were cramped. My heart was a cold, hard stone in my chest.

I looked at the last line I'd written. It was a question. A simple one.

_What does Daniel love more than whiskey?_

The answer, I already knew. He loved winning. He loved watching people fall. He loved standing at the top of something tall and knowing everyone below him was bleeding.

I smiled again. It was easier this time. Practice.

"Then I'll give him something to win," I said to the empty house. "And I'll make sure it costs him everything."

I closed the laptop. I didn't sleep. I didn't need to. I had five days to become the kind of woman who could walk into a funeral and smile at her dead husband's ghost.

Five days.

And then Daniel Ashford would learn what happens when you leave a bayou girl with nothing but her grief and a reason to survive.

Thursday came slow and fast all at once. The doorbell rang at 4 PM. I opened it to find Rhett standing on my porch, soaked from the rain, his eyes red from the flight and something else.

He didn't say hello. He said, "He knows you know."

My blood went cold. "What?"

"Daniel called me an hour ago. He asked if you'd been in touch with anyone. He asked if you'd hired a man named Frank Delgado."

"What did you say?"

"I said no." Rhett's jaw tightened. "But he didn't believe me. He never believes me. He's already in Louisville. He's not waiting for the funeral."

I stood there, rain blowing in through the open door, the smell of wet earth and old secrets filling my house.

Rhett reached into his coat and pulled out a folded piece of paper. "He gave me this. For you. He said to read it before Saturday."

I took it. My hands were steady. My heart was not.

I unfolded it.

One sentence, in Daniel's handwriting, the same hand that had signed our marriage certificate.

_Dear Wren. I know about the envelope. I know about the photos. And I know about the fire. You've been busy. So have I. See you Saturday. Bring your smile._

I looked up at Rhett. The rain kept falling. The sky kept darkening.