Chapter 2 — A Name on the Guest List

I called my mother from the back of the car.

June Ward answered on the third ring. “You sound tired.”

“I am. Did you ever know anyone named Bellini?”

The line went quiet.

“Mom?”

“Where are you?”

“In New York. Why?”

“I know you’re in New York. Where exactly?”

I watched the gates of Nico’s house disappear behind us. “I worked an event at his family’s place.”

“Come home.”

“I have a question.”

“And I’ve answered it. Come home.”

“You haven’t answered anything.”

June breathed out slowly. “Don’t let them tell you I stole from them.”

I straightened. “What?”

“They might not know the whole story. But people hear that I left suddenly, and they make assumptions.”

“No one has accused you of stealing.”

“Good.”

“Mom, what happened?”

“I need to tell you in person.”

She ended the call before I could argue.

For the rest of the ride, I studied the email Paige had forwarded. She had sent the complete message, including the attachment details and headers. I wasn’t trained to trace an anonymous sender, but event work had taught me to check times, access lists, and the names people forgot they had left in a file.

The two pictures came from different cameras. The first looked like a ceiling security feed. The second had been taken on a phone, close enough to show the champagne stain on my dress.

Someone had watched the private corridor. Someone else had been waiting inside it.

At my apartment, I changed, showered, and opened my event folder. The fundraiser had required forty-three staff members, seventeen vendors, and a guest list that changed until the doors opened. I had kept copies of the final schedules because people always disputed hours afterward.

At 2:47 a.m., the west wing should have been empty. The cleaning crew had been assigned to the ballroom. Security had closed the upper floor to guests.

I found the access log Nico’s operations team had shared with me before the event. It listed every contractor badge issued for the evening. One badge had been assigned to a floral assistant who left at midnight.

At 3:11 a.m., it had been used again.

The person who photographed me had gone into the corridor with a badge that should already have been returned.

My phone rang. Nico.

I let it ring twice, then answered. “Did you find the photographer?”

“Not yet. Rosa told me you left without a car.”

“I had one.”

“I’ve asked my staff for the access logs.”

“I already have yesterday’s copy. Floral badge F-12 was used at 3:11.”

A pause. “How did you get that?”

“You sent it to the event team.”

“F-12 was checked out at midnight.”

“Then someone used a returned badge.”

“I’ll check the cameras.”

“Check who handled badge returns first.”

“You sound as if you’ve done this before.”

“I find out which waiter signed out a missing cash box. It’s the same idea with worse people involved.”

Nico gave a brief, unwilling laugh.

I opened another folder. “Someone drafted the email before I went upstairs. They were ready to accuse a staff member of something, even if I hadn’t found your room.”

His voice lost its warmth. “Send me what Paige forwarded.”

“I will after I make a copy.”

“That’s fair.”

It was the first thing he had said all morning that made me want to keep talking.

“I need something too,” I said. “A public correction. You can say your announcement was a mistake.”

“I’ll do it.”

“No statement that calls me a close friend. No suggestion we’ve been seeing each other.”

“Understood.”

“By noon.”

“You set deadlines for everyone?”

“When they’ve cost me a job.”

He was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry, Tessa.”

I had expected an excuse. The apology gave me less to push against.

“At noon,” I repeated, and ended the call.

I spent the next hour calling the floral company. Their assistant confirmed she had handed her badge to a security guard at the loading entrance before leaving. She remembered him because he had teased her about carrying a box twice her size.

She did not know his name.

I wrote down the description and sent it to Nico with the badge number and a copy of the email. Then I checked my agency profile. It was still cached online even though the company had removed my photograph from its website.

Tessa Ward grew up in Kingston and learned event planning from her mother, a bookkeeper who could organize anything.

A harmless line. I had written it myself.

I searched the fundraiser page for my name. A staff biography had been posted alongside the gala announcement two weeks earlier. I was one of three coordinators listed. Why choose me?

Then I remembered June’s silence at the word Bellini.

At eleven forty, Paige called.

“I sent the owners your explanation,” she said. “They’re willing to review the decision.”

“After they terminated me?”

“I told them they should have heard you first.”

I leaned back from my laptop. Paige had spent most of the fundraiser telling us to solve problems faster. I hadn’t expected her to defend me afterward.

“Thank you,” I said.

“I should have sent you home when your shift ended. You were exhausted.”

“You told me sitting down would get me fired.”

“I remember.”

Neither of us tried to make the moment easier.

“There’s something else,” Paige said. “A board representative called the agency this morning. He asked whether we verified family names when hiring staff.”

“Whose family?”

“He asked whether your mother had ever used Ward as a maiden name.”

“She didn’t.”

“I told him employee records were private.”

“Did he give you his name?”

“No. The call came through the gala office.”

I wrote that down. “I’m going to find out who made it.”

At noon exactly, Nico’s office released a statement. He had spoken without consulting me. There was no engagement. I had attended the fundraiser in a professional capacity, and any claim about a private relationship was false.

It could not restore my job. It did let me breathe.

A minute later, he sent a text.

Security is reviewing the badge return. Please tell me if anyone contacts you again.

I typed

I will

, then deleted it. I did not want every discovery to pass through his hands first.

The doorbell rang.

Through the peephole, I saw June standing in the hall with an overnight bag and the stubborn expression she wore whenever an airline lost her luggage.

I opened the door.

She stepped inside and held me so tightly that I stopped asking questions for a moment.

“I told you to come home,” she said against my hair.

“You came here.”

“I didn’t like waiting.”

When she pulled away, I showed her my agency biography. “Someone saw this. Then they asked about your maiden name.”

June read the screen. Her face lost color.

“It was Vale,” she said. “June Vale.”

The name meant nothing to me. It meant something to her.

“Tell me why they want you.”

“I don’t know who they are now.” She set down her bag. “Twenty-seven years ago, I found payments in a Bellini ledger that nobody could explain. I asked for the supporting records. Two days later, someone entered my apartment and took my copies.”

“Did you report it?”

“I tried. A lawyer told me I had misunderstood what I’d seen. I was nineteen, and someone had just been inside my home. I left.”

“Which lawyer?”

June looked toward the window, as if the city might have followed her here.

“Arthur Voss.”

I wrote down his name.

“Please don’t go near him,” she said.

“I’m going to find out why he’s looking for us.”

June took my hand. “Tessa, I never said he was.”

“No,” I said. “You didn’t.”

But I had not told her that a board representative had called Paige. June had guessed where the questions came from.