“Mom, you have to see this.”
Leo’s voice was tight with urgency, pulling me from the buzzing dread of Sabrina’s latest tabloid attack. News vans still idled at the end of the driveway, their lenses glinting like hungry eyes.
He stood by my late husband’s oak desk, a heavy leather-bound binder clutched in his hands. The air smelled faintly of aged paper and something metallic, a scent I hadn’t noticed before.
“I finally got the lock on Dad’s hidden compartment open,” Leo explained, his fingers tracing the embossed cover of the binder. “It was behind the false back in his bottom drawer. I remember him always being so careful about it.”
A chill traced my spine. My husband, Robert, had been meticulous, almost obsessively so, about keeping his work life separate from home. For him to hide something here, in our family home, was unsettling.
He flipped the binder open to a series of dated ledgers. Each page detailed annual payments, meticulously logged.
“These are off-the-books,” Leo said, his brow furrowed. “Huge sums. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, every year, to a group called Aegis.”
My breath caught. Aegis. The name sent a jolt of recognition and fear through me. It was the underground syndicate, the fixers, the ones who made problems disappear in Hollywood.
Leo pointed to a specific entry: “This one, from 2012. Right after the ‘Titan Flames’ explosion. It says ‘settlement for non-disclosure agreement.'”
The implication hung heavy in the air, a poisonous gas. My husband had been paying off the syndicate to keep the truth about that day buried. The same truth that gave me this scar.
Just then, my phone blared, shattering the tense silence. It was Sabrina.
I stared at the caller ID, then at Leo. His eyes widened slightly.
“Put it on speaker,” he whispered.
I tapped the screen, holding the phone away from my ear.
“Helena, darling,” Sabrina’s voice purred, laced with a false sweetness that made my stomach churn. “Did you enjoy the TMZ exclusive? Such an unfortunate misunderstanding with the safe.”
A fresh wave of anger washed over me. She was utterly brazen.
“What do you want, Sabrina?” I managed, my voice steady despite the tremor in my hands.
“Oh, just a friendly heads-up,” she chirped. “I’ve instructed the bank to freeze all your accounts. Effective immediately. You wouldn’t believe the liabilities my legal team found.”
I felt a cold tightening in my chest. My lifeline, severed.
“And just so you’re fully prepared,” Sabrina continued, her voice growing sharper, “I’ve arranged for an eviction notice to be delivered to your ‘estate’ tomorrow morning. Our production crew will be there, live, for a special segment of my new reality documentary series, ‘Hollywood Royalty: Untangling the Parasites.'”
She let out a short, cruel laugh.
“Don’t worry, we’ll give you plenty of screen time. Make sure you look appropriately distraught.”
The line clicked dead.
My hand still held the phone, a useless block of plastic. Sabrina wasn’t just trying to publicly shame me; she was trying to trap me. She wanted me on camera, cornered and desperate, reacting to her every cruel move.
She wanted me to break my silence. And now, thanks to Leo’s discovery, I understood exactly why. She wanted to keep the Aegis secret buried, just like my husband had.
+ There are no comments
Add yours