Chapter 5 - The Ultrasound Photo In My Husband's Desk
The line went dead again.
I stared at the dashboard.
“Newport,” Tobias said, his knuckles turning white on the steering wheel.
“Grandmother’s estate has been locked since she passed five years ago.”
“Dad’s real financial ledgers are hidden in the study walls.”
“Garrett knew?” I asked.
“He didn't know the exact location,” Tobias said.
“That’s why he’s burning the entire house down.”
“He doesn't want to find the evidence.”
“He wants to incinerate it.”
Tobias swung the truck around across the grassy median.
We sped south toward Rhode Island.
The highway blur looked like gray watercolor.
My mind raced back to the penthouse.
To my husband's mahogany desk.
Three months ago, I was looking for a passport.
I found a sonogram tucked beneath a stack of harbor leases.
The date was recent.
The name on the ultrasound was blacked out with an industrial marker.
When I confronted Garrett, he took me in his arms.
He looked into my eyes with tears in his own.
“It was from my sister who miscarried years ago,” he had whispered.
“I keep it to remind myself how precious life is.”
“I want us to have a baby soon, Rosalind.”
“Just wait until the shipyard expansion is finished.”
He had held me while I wept.
I had believed every single syllable.
Every tear he shed was a rehearsal for my murder.
We crossed the Rhode Island border an hour later.
The rain fell in sheets now.
We turned down the narrow, gravel road leading to the Mercer estate.
The Victorian mansion loomed through the fog like a sleeping titan.
Black smoke was already curling from the third-story windows.
An unmarked black van sat idling in the circular driveway.
Two men in dark coveralls were carrying red gas cans toward the front porch.
“Stay here,” Tobias ordered, reaching for his weapon.
“Not a chance,” I snapped.
I grabbed a heavy iron tire iron from behind the truck seat.
“I’m done sitting in corners while our family burns.”
We leaped from the truck.
The mud sucked at our boots.
The men didn't see us coming through the driving rain.
Tobias moved with terrifying speed.
For a man who had feigned paraplegia for fifteen years, his muscles were coiled
wire.
He struck the first man from behind.
The tire iron slammed into the man’s knee.
The man collapsed with a sharp crack.
The second man dropped his gas can and pulled a knife.
Tobias ducked the slash.
He drove his elbow into the man’s throat.
The attacker dropped into the gravel, gagging for air.
Tobias grabbed the second man by the collar and dragged him toward the porch.
“Who sent you?” Tobias growled.
The man spat blood.
“Go to hell.”
Tobias pressed his thumb into the man’s eye socket until he shrieked.
“Vance!” the man screamed.
“Garrett Vance!”
“He told us to burn the east wing library!”
“He said five grand each if nothing survived!”
Tobias knocked him cold with a single punch.
We rushed into the burning house.
Smoke filled the grand foyer.
The smell of gasoline and burning cedar was choking.
We ran up the stairs toward Dad’s old study.
Flames were licking the edges of the mahogany bookshelves.
Tobias kicked open the double doors.
He ran to the stone fireplace.
He jammed his fingers into a crack between the granite blocks.
He pulled a hidden lever.
A hollow compartment behind the hearth popped forward.
Inside sat a heavy, fireproof lockbox.
Tobias pulled it out.
The metal was hot to the touch.
“We got it,” he coughed through the thick smoke.
“Rosalind, get out!”
I turned toward the hallway.
A silhouette stood at the top of the stairs.
It wasn't one of the hired arsonists.
It was Penelope.
She held a nickel-plated revolver in her small, manicured hand.
Her blonde hair was plastered to her cheeks with rain.
She wasn't wearing her mourning veil anymore.
Her face was twisted with pure hatred.
“You just wouldn't die, would you, Rosalind?” Penelope yelled over the roar of
the fire.
“You always had to be the perfect daughter!”
“The legal heir!”
“The brilliant shipyard manager!”
The smoke curled between us.
“You’re carrying my child, Penelope,” I said.
My voice cut through the sound of the crackling wood.
Penelope laughed.
It was a wild, hysterical sound.
“Your child?” she sneered.
“This baby is my ticket to everything you ever owned.”
“Garrett never loved you.”
“He touched you because he had to.”
“Every time he slept in your bed, he came to my room afterward to wash off your
scent!”
Pain ripped through my heart, but my hands didn't shake.
I stepped forward through the smoke.
“You took his poison,” I said.
“You helped him drown me.”
“You’re a monster, Penelope.”
“And you’re dead,” Penelope screamed.
She raised the revolver.
She aimed directly at my forehead.
Her finger tightened on the trigger.
A loud crash shook the floor beneath us.
A burning support beam gave way from the ceiling.
It fell between us in a curtain of fire and sparks.
Penelope fired.
The bullet grazed my shoulder, ripping through my wool sweater.
Tobias lunged from the smoke.
He threw the fireproof lockbox directly into Penelope’s chest.
The impact knocked her off balance.
She tumbled backward down the grand staircase.
Her gun clattered down the wooden steps.
We ran to the balcony railing.
Penelope lay sprawled on the landing below.
She was clutching her stomach, groaning in agony.
“My baby,” she gasped, looking up at us through the smoke.
“Garrett... help me...”
Tobias grabbed my arm.
“We have to go, Rosalind!”
“The whole roof is coming down!”
I looked down at the woman who had tried to steal my life.
I could have left her there to burn.
She had left me to drown in forty feet of freezing river water.
I turned to Tobias.
“Pick her up,” I commanded.
Tobias stared at me like I had lost my mind.
“She tried to shoot you three seconds ago!”
“She’s carrying my child!” I screamed above the roar of the flames.
“Pick her up, Tobias! Now!”
Tobias gritted his teeth.
He vaulted the burning railing.
He hauled Penelope over his shoulder like a sack of grain.
We burst through the front doors just as the study ceiling collapsed.
A geyser of fire erupted into the Rhode Island sky.
We threw Penelope into the back of our truck.
She was unconscious, her pulse rapid and weak.
Tobias slammed the tailgate.
He opened the lockbox with a crowbar.
Inside lay Dad’s private audit ledgers.
And at the very bottom was a flash drive labeled:
VANCE FAMILY CORRUPTION – FULL AUDIO LOGS.
Tobias looked at the drive, then at me.
“This destroys Garrett Vance,” Tobias said.
“It destroys Marcus Vance.”
“It destroys their entire empire.”
Then Penelope’s phone in her dropped purse began to ring.
The caller ID displayed a picture of Garrett.
Tobias picked it up and tapped the screen.
He didn't speak.
Garrett’s frantic voice shouted through the speaker:
“Penelope! Where are you?”
“The board meeting was moved up to ten o'clock!”
“Marcus just told me something impossible!”
Garrett was hyperventilating on the other end.
“The coroner didn't find Rosalind’s body in the car,” Garrett screamed.
“And Tobias’s wheelchair was empty!”
“The straps were cut with a blade!”
May you like
“He was walking, Penelope!”
“Tobias was walking!”
