Chapter 3
The next three days were a blur.
Eleanor was still in the ICU, in a medically induced coma to reduce the swelling on her brain. The doctors said it would be at least another week before they could wake her up.
Nathaniel spent half his time at the hospital and half at the estate, making phone calls, arranging extra security, checking on Lila and me.
Victoria was out on bail, charged with attempted murder.
But that didn’t make me feel any safer.
She called the house at all hours. Never said anything. Just breathed heavy into the phone until I hung up.
Notes started showing up on the west wing porch. Scrawled in messy, angry handwriting.
You’ll regret this.
Little girls trip all the time.
No one will believe a maid and a liar.
I burned every single one of them before Lila could see.
But she knew something was wrong.
She started having nightmares. Waking up screaming, gasping for air, her asthma inhaler clutched in her hand.
I’d hold her until she stopped shaking, my own heart breaking.
This was my fault. I should have kept her away from this house. I should have run the second she told me what she saw.
One afternoon, Nathaniel found me in the kitchen, staring at a crumpled note I’d just found in the mailbox.
He took it from my hand, read it, and his jaw tightened so hard I could see the muscle jump in his cheek.
“That’s it,” he said. “I’m hiring a private investigator. I want to know everything about Victoria. Every secret. Every mistake. I want enough dirt to bury her so deep she never sees the light of day again.”
The PI came back three days later with a thick folder full of documents.
Nathaniel and I sat at the kitchen table after Lila went to bed and read every single page.
Victoria’s real name wasn’t Victoria Hale. It was Victoria Rainer.
She’d worked as a personal assistant for a wealthy couple in New York five years ago. Embezzled almost two hundred thousand dollars from them. Faked a reference to get the job with Nathaniel’s business partner, which was how she’d met Nathaniel in the first place.
She had a long history of credit card fraud. Arrests for shoplifting. A restraining order from an ex-boyfriend who’d claimed she’d threatened to kill his new girlfriend.
And the worst part?
Six months before she got engaged to Nathaniel, she’d taken out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy on Eleanor.
With herself listed as the sole beneficiary.
I felt sick to my stomach.
“She didn’t just want her out of the way,” I said, staring at the policy document. “She wanted to get paid for it.”
Nathaniel slammed his fist on the table so hard the coffee mugs rattled.
“I’m such an idiot,” he said, his voice raw with anger and shame. “I brought a monster into my house. Into my mother’s house. She could have killed her. She almost did.”
He looked at me, his eyes glistening.
“If it wasn’t for Lila… if she hadn’t been brave enough to say something… Victoria would have gotten away with it. She would have gotten all my mother’s money. And she would have married me. And God only knows what she would have done next.”
I reached across the table and touched his hand.
“It’s not your fault,” I said. “She lied to everyone. She was good at it.”
Nathaniel turned his hand over and laced his fingers through mine. His hand was warm. Solid.
“I’m going to make this right,” he said. “I promise you. No more notes. No more phone calls. She’s never going to hurt you or Lila ever again.”
For the first time since this whole nightmare started, I let myself believe him.
But I should have known.
Victoria wasn’t going to go down without a fight.
May you like
And she had one more card left to play.
One that would tear everything we were building apart.
