sweat trickle down the back of my neck. I was holding the evidence that my mother-in-law wasn’t dead, my husband was living a stolen life he knew nothing about, and the harmless, tea-brewing housekeeper upstairs had structured a legal trap to ensure she would eventually inherit everything through my daughter.
Suddenly, the speaker on the desk crackled. The soft breathing of baby Clara was interrupted by the sound of floorboards creaking upstairs in the main house. Then came the sound of a heavy door clicking shut, followed by footsteps moving across the nursery rug.
My blood ran cold. Martha was in Clara’s room.
I shoved my phone into my pocket, grabbed the binder with the contracts, and bolted toward the stairs. I took the concrete steps two at a time, shoved open the iron trapdoor, and threw myself into the dark greenhouse. I barely registered the freezing air as I ran through the corridor into the main kitchen.
I dropped the binder beneath the island cabinet and crept up the back servants’ stairs in my stocking feet, clutching my lantern like a weapon. The nursery door was ajar, a sliver of candlelight spilling onto the hallway floorboards.
I peered through the crack. Martha was standing over Clara’s crib. In her right hand, she held a glass medicine dropper, hovering just inches above my daughter’s open mouth.
I didn’t scream. I didn’t hesitate. I kicked the door open with all the force in my body. The heavy
oak slammed into the wall, rattling the pictures on the wallpaper. Martha spun around, her eyes widening in pure shock, the dropper slipping from her fingers and shattering on the hardwood floor.
‘Step away from my daughter right now,’ I said, my voice shaking with a terrifying, cold fury.
Martha’s face transformed in an instant. The meek, polite expression she had worn for years vanished, replaced by an icy, calculated sneer. She looked down at the broken glass, then looked right into my eyes. ‘You shouldn’t have gone into the greenhouse, Lauren. You don’t understand what it took to keep this family from collapsing thirty years ago.’
‘Julian is your son,’ I whispered, keeping my eyes locked on her as I stepped between her and the crib, scooping Clara into my arms with my free hand. ‘You sold him to Arthur, and now you’re poisoning Arthur so you can take this house.’
Martha didn’t deny it. Instead, she took a slow step backward toward the doorway, her voice chillingly calm. ‘Arthur was a coward who couldn’t face the death of his precious heir. I gave this estate a future. Julian has lived like a prince because of me. Everything in this house belongs to my bloodline, not Arthur’s ghost. And nobody is going to take it away from us.’
Before I could reach the doorway, Martha pulled the heavy bedroom door shut from the outside and turned the antique brass skeleton key in the lock. The
click of the bolt sounded like a gunshot.
I was trapped in the second-floor nursery with my four-month-old daughter. The storm was howling outside, the power was out, and my phone had only fifteen percent battery with zero cellular service due to the downed coastal towers.
I heard Martha’s footsteps retreating down the hallway toward Arthur’s bedroom downstairs. Panic threatened to choke me, but adrenaline took over. I wrapped Clara securely in a baby carrier against my chest, pulled on my winter coat, and ran to the nursery window overlooking the lower roof of the sun porch.
The windowsill was slick with freezing rain. I unlatched the sash, pushed it upward against the freezing gale, and climbed out onto the sloping shingles. The wind tore at my hair, but I kept my weight centered, crawling down the roof until I reached the top of the garden trellis. With Clara pressed tightly against my chest, I lowered myself rung by rung into the frozen rose bushes below, my hands tearing against the thorns.
I hit the muddy ground, scrambled to my feet, and ran around the corner of the house toward the garage where my SUV was parked. But through the lighted window of Arthur’s bedroom on the ground floor, I saw Martha standing beside his bed, holding a syringe.
She was going to silence Arthur before Julian could ever make it home.
I couldn’t just drive away. If Arthur died tonight, Julian would inherit the estate with