Caro’s message twisted through my brain like a tornado. From the outside, her life looked charmed. She had married into a wealthy family, joined their business, and had an adorable son. It wasn’t perfect—Caro’s dislike of her sister-in-law was intense—but she loved Theo’s father and stepmother, and I knew they spoiled her. I had no ambition to live on the Upper East Side, but even I was jealous of the town house they’d given Caro and Theo as a wedding present. With its gargoyle sentinels and stained-glass windows, it looked like something out of a gothic fairy tale, equal parts stunning and sinister.

No matter what it looks like, my death won’t be an accident.

The last time I’d seen Caro was the Saturday before she died. She’d been distant and distracted, but my sister was always wound up tight when working on a big project. The Thraxton hotel chain had suffered in the pandemic, and a lot was riding on her public-relations campaign to revive the brand. Teddy had been running around, making me laugh, and keeping the conversation from getting too serious.

Theo killed his first wife and got away with it.

This was the one part of Caro’s message that made me question whether it was real. What first wife? Theo hadn’t been married before. Back when he and Caro were dating, I’d vetted him online. You couldn’t hide a secret like that. Could you?

I turned every photo over again, reading Caro’s notes. There was nothing about Theo’s first wife. I grabbed my laptop, tried the file link from Osiris’s Vault again, and came up empty. I inserted the memory card. There were 1,702 files on it. I clicked on the first few. A photo of Theo finally popped up; in it, he was standing over his father and son in front of a towering Christmas tree. His arms were crossed and his expression was inscrutable as he watched his father and son playing with a model train. They looked like they were having a good time; Theo did not.

Bring him to justice, no matter what you have to do.

I clicked through the first fifty files. Seeing so many photos of my sister in happier times brought tears to my eyes. Maybe there was a photo of Theo and his first wife, but I wasn’t ready to deal with so much of my own family history to find it just then. I ejected the memory card and returned it to its plastic case. My screen switched to an article about my sister. I didn’t know why I hadn’t closed it. I noticed for the first time that the byline belonged to Abby Morel, the sparkling monster I’d encountered in front of the church.