Total pages in book: 134
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 129676 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 648(@200wpm)___ 519(@250wpm)___ 432(@300wpm)
Blood.
I angled my phone to the floor. A path of blood led into the hallway. A straight line of minuscule drops, like morsels of candy in Hansel and Gretel’s story. I knew how that tale ended, but curiosity killed the cat.
It might as well kill me too.
Why was there blood here? And what did it mean that my first reaction was to worry for my awful husband’s well-being?
I followed the red trail, keeping my flashlight on it. Two sets of dusty imprints from boots marked the floor. One I recognized as Tate’s Hermès loafers, but the other set belonged either to another man or an extremely robust and tall woman.
The trail led me back to the study. I’d searched here before, and it was vacant.
I continued following the blood to where it stopped in front of the floor-to-ceiling mahogany shelves laden with books, certificates, and decor.
A smidge of blood sat inconspicuously on the bottom of the wooden shelving, trickling just beneath it, hinting that whoever had been dragged here also disappeared beyond the shelves.
A secret passage.
Tate was a high-profile billionaire. Having a place to hide in case intruders came in was probable. Most billionaires had panic rooms.
I scanned the rows of books, mostly business-related, wondering which one I should move to open this sesame.
Initially, I looked for a book placed out of order, knowing my fiancé’s affinity for structure and math. Alas, they were all primly ordered alphabetically, by surname, with equal numbers of hardcovers and paperbacks on each shelf.
I began sliding books in and out. Shifting small statues around. The figurines and bookends were all Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland themed.
The White Rabbit. The Caterpillar. The Queen of Hearts. The Hatter. The Dormouse.
It was no wonder my boss was enamored with this particular artwork. It was a satirical book, penned by a don of mathematics in a Victorian era, that dealt with the tragic and inevitable loss of innocence, death, and life as a meaningless riddle.
My heart rammed against my rib cage, and bile coated my tongue. Finally, my gaze landed on two matching bronze bookends. Each had the face of a creepy, smiling cat. Their ears could be used as a lever. I yanked one toward me.
Nothing happened.
I pulled both simultaneously, and the ceiling trembled, the floor shifting beneath my feet.
The bookcase groaned and squeaked, moving slowly as it parted into a door leading to a steep, pebbled stairway.
Goose bumps shot from the base of my spine all the way to my skull.
I stepped inside before I changed my mind. The door clicked shut behind me. I took a deep breath and made my way down. Danger soaked the walls, the air, even my lungs.
Why was I here, doing this?
Because if he’s in trouble, you’ll help him. And if he is the trouble, you’ll be able to blackmail him out of this arrangement.
It was a win-win situation, really. Unless I had just signed my own death warrant and this ended with my body in someone’s trunk.
Music reverberated in the narrow, curving stairway, bouncing off the walls like bullets. It sounded like it came from somewhere deep and far. “Search and Destroy.” The Skunk Anansie version. The bass danced in the pit of my stomach.
Muffled voices rose from the foot of the stairway, ribboning around my limbs like chains.
My fingers gripped my seashell bracelet. I had spent my entire life doing the right thing, always on the straight and narrow, and this was where I landed.
In the secret basement of my ruthless billionaire husband, while he did God knows what to God knows who.
Not everything you did was right. You do have one very messed-up secret.
I reached the end of the stairway. A panic room. Small and square, paneled by metal walls, and scarcely furnished.
Inside, my husband, still clad in his work suit, crouched over a dead man on the floor, surgically sewing what appeared to be a small, black thorn between the corpse’s eyes.
I slapped my mouth and clamped my teeth, desperate not to make a sound, but a frightened moan escaped anyway.
Tate twisted around, expression vacant, eyes dead.
And that was when I started to run.
Age ten
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
Two, six, two.
I was considered a genius student, but I did not test well.
Tests were followed by a whole lot of punishments and no rewards if I didn’t succeed. I’d been trained to think of them as my enemies.
Yet the academy forced me to enter this stupid math contest. I was already breezing through the material most people who pursued a bachelor of science in mathematics were still struggling with.
I found myself sitting on a Zurich stage with high schoolers on a crisp winter afternoon, solving equations in front of an audience.
We were given little clocks they put on our tables and pencils engraved with the name of the insurance company that sponsored the competition. My fingers quaked around my pencil. I could not focus on the numbers in front of me.