Chapter 484: French House

It wasn't Vivian I had to contend with when the maid opened the front door to greet me. Instead, it was the hurried and tactical clickity-clack approach of Rachelle. The mayor's previously estranged mother had made an appearance in Reading long after she'd decided living in Montpellier or wherever it was she'd taken her share of Ranier's fortune, wasn't suiting her needs any longer. Perhaps because she missed her daughter, though I doubted very much it was her loving relationship with Vivian that had brought her home. If anything, the tall woman, aging not nearly as well as her child though with the same face, weathered by deep-seated narcissism and with that fraudulent smile she clearly assumed was working on everyone around her tugging at her overly augmented lips, was here to make Vivian's life miserable.