Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN IN THE STORAGE ROOM
For one suspended second, nobody moved.
Then Brianna did.
She lunged forward from the floor and knocked over a stack of old hatboxes by the far wall.
The crash exploded through the room.
Naomi jerked toward the noise.
“Brianna!”
At the same instant, Brianna looked directly at the door and shouted,
“There’s a rat!”
The lie was absurd.
It worked anyway.
Gavin turned toward the shelves.
Alyssa stumbled backward, nearly losing her footing in the dark corridor.
The door moved—just slightly—then stopped.
Inside, Brianna began sobbing louder, crawling after the fallen boxes like she was panicking over the disturbance.
Naomi snapped, “For God’s sake, pull yourself together.”
“Don’t come in here!” Brianna cried. “Please—there’s broken glass.”
Alyssa understood.
Brianna was buying her seconds.
She turned and ran.
Not down the main hall.
Through the service corridor beside the pantry, then through the laundry room, then out the side door into the freezing dark behind the mansion.
Her lungs burned. Her eyes streamed. Somewhere inside the house, she heard a distant shout—Gavin? Naomi?—but she did not stop until she reached her car parked near the hedge-lined drive.
Only then did she realize she still had the silver ribbon basket in one hand.
A stupid domestic prop from a life that had just exploded.
She dropped it into the passenger seat and gripped the steering wheel.
Her phone started ringing almost immediately.
Gavin.
Again.
Again.
Then a text.
Alyssa, please answer. You heard something out of context.
Out of context.
Alyssa laughed so sharply it turned into a broken sound.
Then another message.
Naomi is upset. Brianna caused a scene. Please come back inside and talk to me.
Then:
Don’t drive while you’re emotional.
She stared at that one.
Control disguised as concern.
Her hand moved before she fully thought.
She opened a separate thread.
Mara Levin.
Not friend first. Lawyer first.
Mara had been general counsel for Wellman Metrics since Alyssa acquired majority ownership at twenty-six and expanded the company into a national consumer data platform. She was forty-six, terrifying in a calm way, and one of the few people Alyssa trusted not to waste time on soft language.
Alyssa typed:
Need emergency call. Personal and corporate. Right now.
Mara called in under thirty seconds.
“What happened?”
Alyssa looked at the mansion in her rearview mirror.
“My fiancé just called me a walking ATM and told his mother my company would be theirs after the wedding.”
Silence.
Then Mara said, “Drive to my house. Do not go home if he knows your codes. Do not answer him. Do not send emotional texts. Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“Did he say anything about how?”
“He said after the wedding my company is ours.”
“Did you hear specifics?”
“No.”
“Good enough. Get here.”
Alyssa started the engine.
Then the passenger door jerked open.
She screamed.
Brianna threw herself into the seat and slammed it shut behind her.
“Drive,” she whispered.
Alyssa stared.
Brianna’s face was ghost-white except for the bruise.
“How did you—”
“Drive.”
Alyssa did.
The car shot down the long drive just as the mansion’s front doors opened behind them and Gavin burst onto the steps.
He stopped under the lights, looking out into the dark, one hand clenched around the ring.
Brianna shook violently beside Alyssa.
“He knows you heard him.”
Alyssa’s voice cracked.
“What the hell is happening in that house?”
May you like
Brianna stared straight ahead.
“The same thing that’s about to happen to you.”
