My blood ran ice cold. Twenty million dollars. Offshore transfers. Dummy LLCs.
"You better be right, Julian," Isabella snapped. "If Chloe pushes for an independent audit before the estate is legally finalized, they'll find out we drained the charity accounts. They'll find out what really happened the night Arthur died."
I squeezed my eyes shut, clapping my hand over my mouth to stifle the gasp clawing up my throat. They were stealing from the foundation. They had been draining my father’s life work.
"Chloe isn't going to push for anything," Julian said, his voice dropping into a sinister, calculated register. "She's emotionally unstable. By the end of the gala tomorrow, I'll have the medical proxy signed by her therapist. If she starts asking questions, we'll just say the grief caused a complete psychological break. The dust settles where it's told, Isabella."
My stomach dropped into a bottomless abyss. Julian was using the same phrase. It wasn't just a weird idiom; it was an inside agreement. A code between them.
"Just handle her," Isabella muttered. "I’m going back to the city to double-check the penthouse safe. Have Marcus lock down the estate gates. No one comes in or out without my authorization."
Footsteps moved toward the cellar door. Panic seized me. If they caught me eavesdropping, if Julian realized I knew about the money and his plan to institutionalize me, I wouldn't make it to the gala.
I turned and bolted silently down the corridor, slipping into the dark, temperature-controlled fur closet just as the cellar door swung wide open. I held my breath in the darkness, the smell of mothballs and cedar suffocating me.
I listened to Julian and Isabella walk past my hiding spot, their footsteps fading toward the main house.
I reached into my pocket, my fingers tracing the broken glass of my father's pocket watch. My husband wasn't protecting me. My stepsister wasn't mourning my father. They had formed an alliance to steal everything, and they were planning to lock me away in a psychiatric ward to cover their tracks.
But I had the watch. I had the time of the attack. I just needed proof of the missing money. And Isabella had just told me exactly where it was.
The penthouse safe.
The heavy oak doors of the mudroom clicked shut behind me as I finally stepped out of the suffocating darkness of the closet. My chest heaved as I fought for oxygen, my mind spinning violently. Julian and Isabella were stealing twenty million dollars from the charity foundation. My father had been a ruthless businessman, but the foundation was his soul. It funded pediatric hospitals across New England. It was sacred.
And Julian was going to have me committed to a psychiatric facility to silence me.
I leaned against the wall, squeezing my eyes shut. I needed to move. Isabella had mentioned going back to the city to double-check the penthouse safe. My father owned several properties in Manhattan, but Isabella didn't have access to them. Or at least, she wasn't supposed to.
I hurried through the garage, completely bypassing the house staff, and climbed into my dark gray SUV. My hands shook so violently that it took me three attempts to push the ignition button. I threw the car into reverse and sped out of the massive wrought-iron gates of the estate before Marcus, the head of security, could receive Isabella's lockdown orders.
The rain began as a light drizzle as I merged onto the highway toward Manhattan, the rhythmic thump of the windshield wipers mirroring my racing heartbeat. I gripped the steering wheel, trying to logically piece together the fragments of the nightmare I was suddenly trapped in.
Julian’s valet receipt. The one I had found in his suit jacket a few days ago.
I reached into the center console, digging beneath charging cables and loose change, my fingers brushing against a crumpled square of thermal paper. I pulled it out and smoothed it over the steering wheel. It was a valet ticket from the Wellington Tower, an ultra-exclusive luxury high-rise in Tribeca. The timestamp on the ticket was 1:15 AM on the night my father died.
Julian had sworn to the police that he was asleep in our bed at the estate that entire night.
The Wellington Tower wasn't a Vance Holdings property. It was completely independent. If Isabella was heading to "the penthouse," this had to be it. Julian must have rented or purchased it under one of his dummy LLCs.
It took me an agonizing hour to navigate the gridlocked city traffic in the rain. When I finally pulled into the underground parking garage of the Wellington Tower, my nerves were completely frayed. The garage was bathed in harsh, flickering fluorescent light. I parked the SUV in a dark corner, turned off the engine, and stared at the heavy metal doors leading to the private elevators.
I didn't have a keycard. I didn't know the penthouse number. I just had my father’s broken watch sitting heavy in my pocket, and the desperate, terrifying knowledge that my life was effectively over unless I proved what Julian was doing.
I stepped out of the car. The garage was echoing and damp. I walked briskly toward the elevator bank. A security guard was sitting behind a glass partition, staring mindlessly at a small television screen.
I approached the glass. I needed to play the role of the entitled, wealthy wife. It was the only language people in buildings like this respected.
"Excuse me," I said, rapping my knuckles sharply on the glass.
The guard looked up, annoyed. "Can I help you, ma'am? This is a private garage."