Chapter 3
We drove for three hours in the dark.
Liam wouldn’t tell me where we were going.
He just held my hand over the center console, his thumb rubbing circles on my knuckles, his eyes fixed on the road.
I fell asleep somewhere along the way, my head pressed against the window.
When I woke up, the sun was coming up.
We were on a dirt road, surrounded by pine trees.
At the end of the road was a small log cabin, set back from the water of a quiet lake.
Smoke was already curling out of the chimney.
“Where are we?” I asked, sitting up.
“My dad built this place when I was a kid,” Liam said.
He turned off the engine.
“Only he and I knew about it. Margaret never even knew it existed. Jason was too young to remember. We’re safe here.”
He got out, came around to my side, and lifted me out of the car like I weighed nothing.
My legs were still wobbly from the poison and three days in bed.
He carried me up the porch steps and inside.
The cabin was small, but warm.
A stone fireplace, a worn leather couch, a kitchen with a wood stove.
Two bedrooms down the hall.
It smelled like pine and cinnamon, like the good parts of my childhood I’d almost forgotten.
Liam carried me to the bigger bedroom, tucked me under a thick quilt, and kissed my forehead.
“Rest,” he said.
“I’ll make you something to eat. The doctor said you need to keep your strength up for the baby.”
I slept for six hours straight.
No nightmares.
No sounds of doors slamming or people yelling.
Just the wind in the trees and the crackle of the fire.
When I woke up, the sun was going down.
Liam was sitting at the kitchen table, the original will spread out in front of him, along with his dad’s old leather journal.
He’d found it in the safe back at the mansion, tucked behind the will.
He looked up when I walked in, his face tight.
“Read this,” he said, pushing the journal toward me.
He slid a mug of warm tea across the table.
“The entry from three months before he died.”
I sat down, picked up the journal.
Liam’s dad had had messy, slanted handwriting.
I read the date, then the words, and my blood ran cold.
Margaret asked me again to change the will.
Said Jason deserved more, that Liam’s wife would just take the money and run.
I told her no.
I saw her in the kitchen last week, putting something white in my coffee.
I didn’t drink it.
I’m scared of what she’ll do next.
If anything happens to me, the will goes to Hale.
He’ll keep it safe.
Protect Liam.
Protect any baby they might have.
I looked up at Liam.
His eyes were red.
“He knew,” Liam said, his voice breaking.
“He knew she was poisoning him, and he didn’t tell me. He thought he could handle it. Then he had that ‘heart attack’ three months later.”
I reached across the table, took his hand.
“We have the journal now,” I said.
“We have the will. We have the bank statements. We have proof, Liam. We can make her pay for both of them.”
Liam nodded.
He squeezed my hand.
“Hale is my dad’s old lawyer,” he said.
“He’s the only one who witnessed the will being signed. If we can get him on our side, we can take everything to the DA. Margaret and Jason will rot in prison for the rest of their lives.”
He paused, looking out the window at the dark lake.
“But first,” he said, quieter, “we have to make sure you and the baby are okay. Nothing else matters more than that. Not the money. Not revenge. Just you two.”
That night, we lay in bed together, Liam’s arm wrapped around my waist, his hand resting gently on my stomach.
The baby was still too small to feel, but I put my hand over his anyway.
For the first time in months, I let myself hope.
Maybe we really would get through this.
Maybe we’d get our happy ending.
Then, at 2 a.m., Liam’s phone buzzed on the nightstand.
He picked it up, his face going pale.
He showed me the screen.
A text from an unknown number.
A photo.
Our cabin.
Taken from the trees across the lake.
May you like
The text below it said only two words.
Found you.
