Chapter 2 - THE ROOM BEHIND THE LIBRARY
We didn't go home.
Instead, I took Abigail to a private physician I trusted.
Her injuries were consistent with restraint.
Her jaw was bruised but not fractured.
Her left wrist showed pressure marks.
The doctor documented everything.
Then I asked Abigail to tell me the truth.
Not the version she had told the police.
Not the version Nicholas would tell the lawyers.
The truth.
She stared at the ceiling.
“It started three months after I married Nicholas.”
“What did?”
“The locked room.”
She explained that Nicholas's family owned a historic property outside Charlotte.
There was a library nobody entered.
One evening, Abigail accidentally opened a door behind a bookshelf.
Inside were files.
Bank statements.
Photographs.
Property records.
Names.
Hundreds of names.
She closed the door immediately.
But someone had seen her.
After that, Nicholas changed.
He started checking her phone.
Then her bank account.
Then her messages.
Finally, he told her:
“You saw something that wasn't meant for you.”
I felt a familiar military instinct activate.
“What exactly did you see?”
“I don't know.”
“Think.”
Abigail closed her eyes.
“There was a photograph.”
“Of what?”
“A young woman.”
She opened her eyes.
“She looked like you.”
I froze.
“Me?”
“No. Not exactly.”
Abigail reached for her purse.
She pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.
A handwritten name.
Eleanor Gardner.
My mother's name.
I stared at it.
My mother had been dead for fourteen years.
“What does my mother have to do with them?”
“I don't know.”
Abigail's voice broke.
“But when Gregory saw me looking at the photograph, he said something.”
“What?”
“He said, ‘If the colonel ever finds out, the entire foundation collapses.’”
My pulse quickened.
My mother had founded a small veterans' charity.
I'd spent my childhood believing it was nothing more than a nonprofit.
But perhaps I had never known the full story.
That night, I accessed old military records.
My mother's name appeared in one classified archive.
I wasn't authorized to see the contents.
That alone was enough to concern me.
At 2:17 a.m., someone attempted to access Abigail's medical records.
The hospital security system flagged it.
The request originated from a private law firm.
Ferguson & Cole.
I smiled without humor.
They were already moving.
The next morning, I filed for an emergency protective order for Abigail.
Nicholas responded within hours.
His attorneys claimed Abigail had fabricated the injuries.
Then came the media stories.
ARMY COLONEL INTERFERES IN DAUGHTER'S MARRIAGE.
WEALTHY FAMILY ACCUSES MILITARY OFFICER OF HARASSMENT.
They wanted me angry.
They wanted me to react.
I didn't.
Instead, I started investigating.
And I discovered something strange.
The Ferguson family's most valuable property wasn't their mansion.
It was a company called Ferguson Strategic Holdings.
Its largest client was a federal contractor.
And one of its directors had once worked with my mother.
His name was Daniel Cross.
I recognized it immediately.
Daniel Cross had been one of my mother's closest friends.
May you like
He had died twenty years ago.
Or so I thought.
