Page 35 of Empire of Ash
“Oh, you’re going to love this next bit. He left your employ after the fire. But take a guess where Mr. Karzony worked next.”
My eyes snap to his. Lewis’s mouth thins.
“The Prince household.”
A coldness creeps up my spine, raising my hackles as my jaw clenches.
There’s a knock behind me at the kitchen doorway. I glance over my shoulder and see Liam nodding grimly at me.
“Lewis, why don’t you get home and get some sleep.”
He nods, standing as he methodically packs his paperwork away.
“What do you want to do with this?”
“Sit on it, for now.”
“Look, Noel, her representation is…” he shrugs. “Decent, all things considered. But—”
“But you’re much better.”
He shrugs. “Well, yes.”
“We’ll figure that out soon. For now, I want you to just make sure Ms. O’Halloran has everything you just showed me.”
“You’re the boss.”
When he’s packed up, he shakes my hand, nodding to Liam on his way out the door. My grim head of security steps into the kitchen.
“Does the name Estella Gray mean anything to you?”
My brow furrows.
“Yes? I believe she was Cassandra Ashford’s aunt.”
He clears his throat.
“Is.”
I stare at him. “She’s alive?”
“She has late-stage dementia, but yes. And she lives in London, at a very posh home called Chiswick Acres.”
I frown. It’s not like I was ever well-acquainted with Cassandra’s family, who I know she wasn’t very close with. I met her father, who ended up passing a few months before Cassandra herself, briefly at Thomas’s funeral. Maybe a cousin or two as well. But that’s it.
Liam leans against the refrigerator, crossing his arms over his chest.
“Place costs a pretty two-hundred-thousand quid a year.” His mouth thins. “Guess who paid for five years of her stay there, in full, three years ago.”
My pulse throbs in my neck as I stare at him.
“You’re joking.”
But of course he’s not. I growl, gritting my teeth as I whirl and place my palms flat across the marble countertop.
Where in the unholyfuckdid Ella get a million goddamn pounds from? When she was eighteen years old, no less.
I glance sidelong at Liam, my eyes narrowing. He knows what I want without me having to ask.