Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77171 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 386(@200wpm)___ 309(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
But that isn’t in the cards. Underneath us, something is moving.
I feel it.
I pull back enough to look up at him.
“If Nathaniel knew,” I say, “then he was inside this before you were.”
Samson doesn’t answer. He doesn’t have to.
I see it in his eyes.
An understanding that he, as the oldest brother, was never meant to be anything but the strength, the force. That whatever he thought he knew about the night on the dock was an oversimplified version of the truth.
I glance once past him, back toward the corridor.
Toward the locked door.
Toward the end of the hall.
And the thought that rises is so cold and clean it makes my skin prickle.
The door can wait.
Because the room at the end of the beast’s hall is not the thing that should terrify us now.
It’s the fact that Nathaniel Vexley knew the lie.
And if Nathaniel knew…he’s the reason Samson killed the wrong man.
I look back at Samson.
His face has gone very still.
Too still.
“What?” I ask softly.
He doesn’t answer right away.
Instead he turns slightly, his gaze cutting toward the document still in my hand as though seeing something on it I haven’t yet.
Then he takes it from me.
Reads it again.
“What?” I ask again, sharper now.
“This isn’t about Halstead,” he says. “It’s about me.”
The words don’t make sense.
“About you?”
“He knew Halstead wasn’t the one,” Samson continues, voice flattening. “We already know that. So why didn’t he stop me when he could have? This explains why.”
I go still. “What?”
“Because if I stopped, questions would be asked. Everything would unravel. He didn’t want that.”
Cold slips through me. “So he let it happen.”
“Yes.”
“He chose you,” I say quietly.
“Yes.”
My throat tightens. “You over my father.” I swallow the lump. “And over the truth.”
He nods.
Nathaniel chose his family, his brother, their empire—which could have come crashing down if anyone got wind of the situation—over Victor Halstead, the man in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In a warped way, I understand. I open my mouth to say so when—
I jolt at a low vibrating sound.
It’s not my phone. I’m still holding onto it, the flashlight still shining.
“Is that yours?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I left it in the bedroom.” He follows the sound to the inside of the compartment.
There, half-hidden beneath the remaining papers, something glows.
Another phone.
A burner. It’s plugged into a charger that must go straight into the electrical wiring in the wall.
My heart stops for one terrible second.
Samson reaches past me, plucks it from the back of the hidden compartment, and looks at the screen.
His eyes go dark with rage.
“What is it?” I ask, my voice trembling.
He doesn’t answer.
He just hands me the phone.
There is only one unread message.
Just six words on a black screen.
You opened the wrong door first.
EPILOGUE
A few minutes earlier…
The envelope is on my bed when I get back from the bathroom.
I’m a maid at Vexley House. Nothing ever appears in the servants’ wing by accident, and certainly not in my room. If something is left on my bed, it’s because someone wanted me to find it.
I close the door, lock it, and open the envelope.
Inside is a small black phone and—I gasp—a stack of cash. I pull the bills free and count them without thinking.
Five hundred dollars.
I gasp again.
My mother needs a cancer treatment that’s experimental, and Medicare won’t cover it. The clinic won’t even schedule the first appointment without a deposit.
Five hundred won’t pay for the treatment. But it will get her through the door.
I set the money aside and take out the card beneath it. The instructions are typed.
You need money. Here is five hundred dollars. There’s a message pre-typed on this burner phone. Send the message at 9:00 a.m. from the lower corridor. Stand facing the last door. Do not deviate. You will receive five hundred more when you’re done.
No name. No explanation. Just those instructions.
I should walk away. I know that. People don’t leave cash and a burner phone in a maid’s room without a reason—not a good one, anyway.
But I think of my mother trying not to let me hear the fear in her voice, and I know I’m not going to walk away.
I pick up the phone.
The message is already typed.
You opened the wrong door first.
I read it once. It doesn’t make any sense, but that’s not my problem.
Staff isn’t supposed to go to the lower corridor in Vexley House, so I keep my head down and my steps light. I stop where the instructions said and face the last door.
It looks like any other door.
I check the time.
8:59.
I think about putting the phone back in the envelope, about pretending I never saw it, about walking away before this becomes something I can’t undo.
Then I think of my mother, and the second 8:59 becomes 9:00, I press send.
The message disappears.
The silence that follows feels heavier than it should.