Chapter 3 - THE MARRIAGE WAS NEVER AN ACCIDENT
Mia didn't deny it.
That frightened me more than Ethan's accusation.
“You knew me before tonight?”
“Yes.”
Her voice was barely audible.
“How?”
She looked toward the black monitors.
“Your charity gala in Chicago. Six months before you met Ethan.”
I remembered the evening.
A hotel ballroom.
A scholarship fundraiser.
A stranger had spilled red wine on my dress near the elevators.
A woman helped me clean it before the photographers arrived.
Dark hair.
A scar beneath one eye.
Mia.
“You were there.”
“Yes.”
“And Ethan?”
“He was supposed to meet you that night.”
My stomach dropped.
“He told me we met by accident three weeks later.”
“Nothing about your relationship was accidental.”
The red emergency lights made Mia's face look almost ghostlike.
“Your coffee shop. The gym. The restaurant where he proposed. Even the apartment he rented across from your office.”
I stared at her.
“He planned all of it?”
“We all did.”
Rage burned through my fear.
I slapped her.
The sound cracked through the engine room.
Mia didn't move.
“You let me marry a man who planned to murder me.”
“I didn't know that part.”
“You expect me to believe you?”
“No.”
She looked directly at me.
“But I expect you to survive long enough to hate me later.”
A hiss came through the ceiling vents.
Mia froze.
“Gas.”
She ripped open another cabinet and pulled out two emergency respirators.
Ethan's voice returned.
“You have approximately four minutes.”
Mia handed me a mask.
“What gas?”
“Fire suppression. It displaces oxygen.”
We pulled the respirators over our faces.
Mia climbed onto a pipe assembly and kicked at a maintenance panel.
“Help me.”
Together, we forced it open.
Behind it was a narrow ladder descending into darkness.
Ethan spoke again.
“Claire, before you follow her, you deserve to know who hired her.”
Mia stopped.
I looked up at the speaker.
“Who?”
There was a pause.
Then Ethan said:
“Your mother.”
My hands went numb.
“My mother died eight years ago.”
“No,” Mia said.
I turned toward her.
Her eyes were full of something worse than guilt.
Pity.
“My mother died in a car accident.”
Mia shook her head.
“Laura Whitmore didn't die.”
I couldn't speak.
I remembered the funeral.
The closed coffin.
My father holding my hand while cameras photographed him crying.
The obituary.
The memorial scholarship.
The years of grief.
“Where is she?”
Mia climbed down one rung.
“Claire, we have to move.”
“WHERE IS MY MOTHER?”
The gas hissed louder.
Mia finally answered.
“I don't know.”
“Liar.”
“She disappeared after hiring me.”
“Why would she hire you to manipulate me into marrying Ethan?”
Mia swallowed.
“Because she thought marrying Ethan would force Gregory and Vanessa out of hiding.”
I felt dizzy even through the respirator.
“My marriage was bait?”
“Yes.”
“For them?”
“Yes.”
I almost laughed.
My entire life suddenly felt like a stage set built by people who claimed to love me.
Mia descended the ladder.
I followed because dying angry was still dying.
At the bottom, we crawled through a narrow pipe tunnel until we reached another hatch.
Mia pushed it open.
We emerged inside a refrigerated storage room.
My phone buzzed.
Another message from UNKNOWN.
But Mia was standing beside me.
The text read:
MIA DOESN'T KNOW I'M HERE.
My blood ran cold.
Then:
YOUR MOTHER IS ON THIS YACHT.
May you like
A third message arrived.
AND SHE'S NOT HERE TO SAVE YOU.
