Chapter 10 - WHAT WAS BEHIND THE LOCKED DOOR
The key opened a storage unit.
Unit 214.
Inside was a black metal cabinet.
Locked.
The engraved key fit perfectly.
Detective Brooks opened it.
There were boxes.
Dozens of them.
Photographs.
Bank statements.
Contracts.
Letters.
And a stack of surveillance photographs.
My husband.
Following me.
Before our wedding.
After our wedding.
Outside my workplace.
Outside my apartment.
Outside my father's office.
My hands trembled.
“How long?”
Detective Brooks examined the dates.
“Three years.”
Three years.
He had been watching me for three years.
Before he proposed.
Before he told me he loved me.
Before I said yes.
I sat on the floor.
“I didn't know.”
Detective Brooks crouched beside me.
“You weren't supposed to.”
At the bottom of the cabinet was another folder.
Not blue.
Red.
The label read:
IF SHE IS EVER IN DANGER.
I opened it.
The first page was a list of names.
My husband's mother.
Mara.
Evelyn.
Daniel.
And my husband.
Beside each name were dates and notes.
But beside Daniel's name was something different.
“Potential ally.”
I looked at Detective Brooks.
“Daniel wasn't part of it?”
“Apparently not.”
I turned the page.
There was another name.
Jessica Monroe.
“Potential victim.”
My heart tightened.
Then came the final page.
A photograph of my husband shaking hands with a man I recognized from the news.
A powerful developer.
A man accused of money laundering.
Underneath the photograph my father had written:
“He isn't building a family. He's building a network.”
Detective Brooks stared at it.
“This is bigger than your husband.”
I nodded.
The room felt suddenly too small.
Then I found an envelope.
My name was written across the front.
I opened it.
Inside was a single sentence.
“If he ever hurts you, don't fight him where he is strongest.”
I read it twice.
Then turned the page.
“Take away the money.”
I looked at Detective Brooks.
“What does that mean?”
She smiled slightly.
“I think your father left you instructions.”
“Instructions for what?”
“To dismantle everything your husband built.”
I stared at the documents.
The companies.
The accounts.
The properties.
The people.
The network.
My husband had spent years building a machine designed to control me.
But my father had spent years preparing something else.
A way to break that machine.
My phone rang.
Detective Brooks answered.
Her expression changed.
“What?”
She listened.
Then looked at me.
“They found your husband.”
My stomach tightened.
“Where?”
“He escaped custody.”
I stood.
“How?”
“He didn't.”
“What?”
Detective Brooks lowered the phone.
“He was released by court order this morning.”
My blood ran cold.
“That can't be.”
She showed me the document.
A judge's signature.
A release order.
But something was wrong.
The signature looked familiar.
Too familiar.
Detective Brooks stared at it.
“This isn't the judge's signature.”
I felt the room disappear around me.
Someone had forged a court order.
Someone powerful enough to get my husband out.
Someone who knew exactly where I was.
And then my phone buzzed.
A text message appeared.
No number.
No name.
May you like
Just six words:
You should have stayed in the dirt.
