If you want to be Silas’s wife, you take care of his mess, or you get back on the plane to Ohio.
The living room fell into a tense, suffocating silence. Victoria Finch stared at Silas, a mixture of disbelief and utter rage contorting her face. Silas, panting and dripping, braced himself, his gaze locked onto his former mother-in-law.
“Silas?” Victoria finally managed, her voice a low growl. “How in the hell did you escape?”
“That’s not important now,” he growled back, his eyes flicking to the children, then to me. A silent promise passed between us. “What is important is that you leave these children alone. And Norah.”
“Leave them alone?” Victoria shrieked, her composure completely shattering. “She’s filled their heads with lies! She’s got a stolen document, a fake receipt, that she’s using to destroy everything I’ve built!”
She pointed a trembling finger at the leather folder in my hands. “Frank! Seize that folder! Now!”
Her lead guard, Frank, moved, a hulking shadow. He reached for me, his hand outstretched.
Silas lunged, intercepting Frank with a force that sent the guard stumbling backward. The years of action film training were not just for show.
As the guards moved to restrain Silas, the air outside crackled with an almost supernatural energy. A bolt of lightning, closer and more violent than any before, struck somewhere on the property.
The house plunged into total darkness. The emergency generator, usually a steady hum, sputtered and died, plunging us into an inky blackness.
A collective gasp, then frantic shouts, filled the void.
In the ensuing chaos, I felt a hand brush against mine. Victoria. In the darkness, she’d lunged, snatching the folder.
A flicker of movement in the hearth. A sudden, small burst of light.
Victoria had seized the watermarked studio trust receipt from the folder. In the complete blackness, her silhouette momentarily visible against the dying embers of the fireplace, she thrust the vital document into the roaring flames.
“There!” she screamed, her voice triumphant, triumphant even as the paper shriveled and blackened, turning to ash. “Destroyed! You have nothing now! Nothing!”
A cruel, victorious laugh bubbled from her throat. She believed she had won, that the only tangible proof of her embezzlement was gone, consumed by the fire.
But the darkness, the chaos, had also provided a cover. A secret, unseen act had just taken place.
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