Chapter 1 - THE SISTER IN THE DOORWAY
“Because I asked her to.”
Margaret Cross stood in the hallway, one hand resting on the carved doorframe. She wore a charcoal dress and a string of pearls, and her silver-blond hair was pinned so neatly that she looked untouched by the chaos in the room.
Elena Walsh turned toward her.
“You asked me to do what?”
Margaret's gaze moved from Elena to her brother. “To protect him.”
Julian's expression hardened. “You told me you had hired a qualified aide.”
“I did.”
“You gave me a reference that doesn't exist.”
Margaret didn't deny it.
The three armed men remained near the windows. Their weapons were lowered, but Elena could still hear her own heartbeat. A few minutes earlier, she'd believed she was about to watch Julian Cross die. Now the man she'd spent three months helping into bed, bathing, dressing, and exercising was standing in front of her without so much as a tremor in his legs.
“You can walk,” she whispered.
Julian looked at her. “Yes.”
“You've been able to walk this whole time?”
“Not the whole time. I recovered more than I let people believe. My doctors advised me to keep the improvement private.”
“Why?”
“Because someone tried to kill me on the mountain road. I wanted them to believe they had succeeded in leaving me helpless.”
Elena felt the room tilt. She remembered the first day she arrived at the Cross estate. Julian had sat in the same wheelchair, his legs covered by a dark wool blanket. He had seemed cold, bitter, and exhausted. She had helped him through painful exercises, listened to him curse when his muscles spasmed, and stayed beside him through nights when he woke sweating from nightmares.
Had all of it been an act?
“Were the exercises real?” she asked.
“Some were.”
“Did you need help getting dressed?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you need me to hold your arm when you transferred from the bed?”
Julian didn't answer quickly enough.
Elena's eyes burned. “You let me believe you were helpless.”
“I needed to know whether you were here to hurt me.”
“So you staged an attack?”
“The men were my security team. Their weapons were unloaded.”
“That doesn't make it harmless!”
Her voice cracked. She stepped away from him, suddenly aware of how close she had stood.
Margaret approached. “Elena, please. Let me explain.”
“You lied to me, too.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Margaret reached into her handbag and removed a folded envelope. The paper was worn at the edges.
“Three months ago, I received a letter from your father.”
Elena went still. “My father has been dead for six months.”
“I know. The letter was delivered to my office after his death. It was addressed to me, but it contained your name.”
Inside was a photograph of a black SUV on a mountain road. Its front end was crushed against a guardrail. A date was written on the back: the night Julian's car went over the embankment.
Beneath it was one sentence in her father's handwriting:
The brakes were not the reason he lost control.
Julian's face changed.
“Where did you get this?”
“From the letter,” Margaret answered. “There's more.”
Before she could continue, the lights went out.
A sharp crack sounded from somewhere beyond the study.
The guards moved instantly.
Julian pulled Elena behind him.
May you like
And in the darkness, a voice whispered from the hallway:
“She's not supposed to be alive.”
