Chapter 4 - The Hidden Witness
The hallway was quiet, shadowed by heavy oil portraits of stern-looking Sterling ancestors. I didn't head toward the guest powder room. Instead, I crept silently toward the back service stairs that led down to the stone basement and the rear storage wing.
My heart thrummed against my ribs, but my mind was ice-cold.
As I rounded the corner near the pantry, a flicker of movement caught my eye. The heavy oak door leading to the walk-in linen closet—a room with no windows and a heavy deadbolt on the outside—was slightly ajar.
I pushed it open an inch.
Clara sat huddled on a low wooden bench inside the dark closet, her arms wrapped around her knees, shivering violently. Her face was bruised along her jawline, a fresh purple mark contrasting sharply with her pale skin.
When she saw my face in the crack of the door, she gasped and scrambled backward.
"Clara," I whispered urgently, slipping inside and pulling the door mostly shut behind me. "What are they doing to you? Why are you locked in here?"
Tears spilled instantly over Clara’s lashes. "You shouldn't have come back. If Evelyn sees you—"
"Clara, listen to me," I interrupted, kneeling down in front of her and gripping her cold hands. "I know everything. I saw what they did in the storage shed two nights ago. I have it on video. They are criminals, and Marcus is planning to do the exact same thing to me that they did to you—and God help us, what they did to Julian."
Clara’s breath hitched. Her eyes widened with absolute terror. "Julian... you know about Julian?"
"My investigators are looking into it right now," I said fiercely. "He isn't on a business trip. Where is he, Clara? What did they do to him?"
Clara looked around frantically, as if the walls had ears, before leaning forward so close her lips brushed my ear. "They didn't send him away to a retreat, Danielle. After Julian refused to sign over his inheritance shares two years ago, they locked him in the reinforced storm cellar beneath the old greenhouse. He's been down there for twenty-four months. They give him scraps of food, water, and beat him whenever he tries to demand a lawyer."
My stomach plummeted into an abyss of cold horror. They had imprisoned their own son and brother in a dungeon beneath a greenhouse for two years just to steal his money.
"We're going to get him out," I said, my voice dropping into a register of unyielding granite. "Both of you. But you have to trust me, Clara. We have to play their game for just forty-eight more hours."
Before Clara could answer, heavy, measured footsteps echoed down the service hallway.
Click.
The deadbolt on the closet door rattled.
"Clara?" Evelyn’s cold, clipped voice cut through the air outside. "Who are you talking to in there?"
May you like
Panic surged, but I didn't freeze. I shoved Clara gently behind a towering stack of extra wool blankets, spun around, and pushed the closet door wide open just as Evelyn’s hand reached for the latch.
Evelyn stopped dead in her tracks, her aristocratic face twisting in shock as she found herself staring directly into my eyes.
