Chapter 4 - The Shadow on the Wall
Sleep did not come easily that first night.
The bed was too soft.
The silence was too loud.
In prison,
there is always a sound.
A cough.
A shout.
The rattling of keys.
The humming of the industrial lights.
Here,
in the heart of Beacon Hill,
the world was muffled.
I lay awake,
staring at the ceiling,
tracing the shadows.
I thought about my parents.
They were gone before the scandal.
I was glad for that.
I was glad they didn't have to see their daughter in handcuffs.
I was glad they didn't have to see the girl they raised as a second daughter,
Rachel,
tear our family apart.
I stood up and walked to the window.
The streetlights cast long,
distorted shadows across the cobblestones.
I felt like a shadow myself.
I picked up my phone—a new one,
untraceable,
provided by Julian.
I searched for my own name.
The results were a sea of tabloid headlines.
‘THE BASEBALL BAT BRIDE.’
‘THE FALL OF AN EMPIRE.’
‘LOVE,
LIES,
AND REVENGE.’
There were photos of me being led out of the apartment in my pajamas,
my hair a mess,
my face a mask of shock.
And there were photos of Rachel.
‘THE SURVIVOR.’
She had done interviews.
She had talked about ‘forgiving’ me.
She had talked about how hard it was to ‘love a woman who was so deeply broken.’
I felt a surge of nausea.
Her forgiveness was a weapon.
She used it to keep the public on her side.
She used it to make me look like a villain who had been given every chance.
I scrolled further.
I found a social media account for Rachel Lane.
She had taken his name.
She had taken everything.
The photos were a curated gallery of my stolen life.
Our kitchen.
Our dog—a golden retriever named Barnaby that I had bought for Michael’s birthday.
Barnaby was sitting at her feet in one of the photos.
That hurt more than the house.
The dog didn't know he was being petted by a traitor.
I clicked on a video.
It was a house tour for a high-end lifestyle magazine.
“We wanted a space that felt light,”
Rachel’s voice chirped in the video.
“The previous energy here was so…
heavy.”
“We’ve renovated almost everything.”
She walked through the living room,
pointing out art pieces that I had selected.
She hadn't renovated the art.
She just liked the price tag.
Then she walked into the bedroom.
The bed was different.
The headboard was new.
But the layout was the same.
I closed the phone and gripped the windowsill.
They thought they had cleaned the slate.
They thought they had scrubbed the blood away.
But I could still see it.
I could still see the way Michael’s eyes had gone wide when I stepped back into the room with the bat.
I could still see the way he hadn't even tried to protect her at first.
He had only tried to protect himself.
That was the secret Rachel didn't know.
Michael Lane only loved one person.
And it wasn't her.
It wasn't me.
It was Michael.
And that was how I would break them.
I would show Rachel that she was just as replaceable as I had been.
And I would show Michael that without his money and his status,
he was nothing but a coward in a tailored suit.
I walked back to the bed and sat on the edge.
I didn't need to sleep.
I needed to plan.
Julian had given me the files on their biggest investors.
The main one was a man named Harrison Thorne.
An old-school billionaire.
He valued two things above all else:
Loyalty and stability.
Michael had convinced Thorne that he was the steady hand behind the company.
He had convinced Thorne that I was the chaotic element that had been removed.
What would happen if Thorne found out that the stability was a lie?
What would happen if the ‘loyal’ husband was already looking for his next victim?
I pulled the files toward me.
The night was long,
May you like
but for the first time in three years,
the time belonged to me.
