“Where is she?” I demanded smoothly. “I need to see her immediately.”
The nurse hesitated. “Mr. Hayes explicitly instructed that no one—under any circumstances—is allowed inside Room 108 without his personal presence.”
“Mr. Hayes is currently dealing with a federal audit in Atlanta,” I lied, leaning against the counter. “If I don't confirm her physical condition in the next ten minutes, the eight-thousand-five-hundred-dollar check gets canceled permanently. Do you want to explain that to Dr. Vance?”
The nurse swallowed hard, reaching under the desk for a ring of heavy brass keys. “Room 108. Down the hall to the left. Keep it quick. If she starts agitated vocalizing, push the red wall button.”
My legs felt like lead as I walked down the sterile concrete corridor. The silence was deafening, punctuated only by the distant, rhythmic beep of a heart monitor echoing behind one of the doors.
I stopped in front of Room 108.
I inserted the key into the lock. It turned with a heavy, metallic clack.
I pushed the door open.
The room was tiny, windowless, illuminated only by a single dim bulb hanging from the ceiling. In the center of the room sat an narrow medical bed.
Lying in that bed was a woman.
She was impossibly thin, her skin pale as chalk, her dark hair long and matted. An IV line ran into her frail arm, hooked to a slow drip bag mounted on a rusted metal stand. Heavy leather restraint straps were loosely attached to the sides of the bed frame.
As the door creaked open, her head turned slowly toward me.
Her eyes opened. They were bright, piercing green—the exact same shade as Julian’s eyes.
My knees nearly gave out. I stumbled backward, gripping the doorframe for support.
It was Sarah.
She wasn't a dead memory buried in a cemetery in Oregon. She was alive. She had been kept hidden in this dark, illegal dungeon for ten years.
“Who… who are you?” Sarah’s voice was a barely audible rasp, dry and cracked like sandpaper. She blinked against the light, staring at my face, then down at my pregnant belly. “Are you… an angel?”
Tears welled up in my eyes as I rushed to her bedside, dropping to my knees. “No, Sarah. No. My name is Claire. I’m… I’m Julian’s wife.”
The moment the name Julian left my mouth, Sarah’s entire body went rigid. A look of sheer, paralyzing horror washed over her face. She began to thrash against the sheets, her heart monitor spiking into a frantic, high-pitched beep.
“No! No! Don't let him near me!” she shrieked, her hands clawing at her throat. “He did this! He trapped me! He took everything!”
“Sarah, calm down! Please!” I begged, gently taking her frail hands in mine. “He doesn't know I’m here! I came to save you! Please, tell me what happened!”
Sarah squeezed my fingers with surprising strength, her chest heaving as tears streamed down her hollow cheeks.
“He lied to everyone,” she sobbed, her words coming out in panicked, desperate bursts. “Ten years ago… grandfather left his entire fortune to me. Forty million dollars. Julian got nothing because grandfather found out he was stealing from the family firm. Julian was furious.”
My blood ran cold. Forty million dollars.
“On the night of the crash,” Sarah continued, her eyes wide with lingering trauma, “Julian invited me to his cabin in Oregon to ‘celebrate.’ He spiked my drink. I passed out. When I woke up, I was tied to a chair in a basement. He had arranged a car crash using a stolen vehicle, put a homeless woman’s body in the driver's seat, and set it on fire with my jewelry on her.”
I covered my mouth to muffle a scream.
“He declared me legally dead,” Sarah wept. “He bribed the local medical examiner using offshore cash to confirm my dental records. As my only legal heir, he inherited the entire forty-million-dollar estate. But he couldn't bring himself to kill me in cold blood… so he drugged me into a medically induced coma and locked me in this private facility.”
“Why?” I whispered, horrified. “Why keep you alive?”
“Because the trust fund required my physical signature every five years to release the secondary investment accounts,” Sarah rasped, her voice trembling. “Every five years, his crooked doctors would wake me up just enough to forge my thumbprint on the legal documents. But two weeks ago, the coma drugs stopped working. My body built a tolerance. I woke up completely.”
I sat there on the cold concrete floor, my world collapsing around me in real-time.
My husband wasn't an architect. He wasn't a visionary businessman. He was a psychopath. A murderer. A monster who had faked his own sister’s death, stolen forty million dollars, spent every dime over a decade on luxury real estate, cars, and lavish living, and was now broke again.
And that was why he was targeting me.
He didn't love me. He didn't care about our baby. He had married me because my father was worth eight million dollars.
And now that my father was dead, Julian was draining my trust fund—and slowly poisoning my daily vitamins to cause a fatal miscarriage or blood clot so he could inherit the rest of my estate.
Before I could say another word to Sarah, the heavy steel door at the end of the hallway slammed open with a deafening crash.
Heavy, hurried footsteps echoed down the concrete corridor.
I scrambled to my feet, my heart pounding against my ribs like a jackhammer. I peered through the tiny glass window of Room 108.