Chapter 3 - The Man Outside Her Sister’s House
Audrey woke at 2:13 a.m. to breaking glass.
Her eyes snapped open.
For several seconds she didn't remember where she was.
Then Maya's guest room returned around her.
A second noise came from downstairs.
Maya appeared in the doorway holding a baseball bat.
“Stay here.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Audrey—”
Another crash.
Both sisters froze.
Then someone screamed outside.
A man's scream.
Audrey grabbed her phone.
Before she could dial 911, headlights flooded the bedroom window.
Three black SUVs stopped outside Maya's townhouse.
Men emerged.
Audrey recognized Marcus immediately.
Her stomach dropped.
“Dominic.”
She marched downstairs.
Maya followed.
When Audrey opened the front door, cold air rushed inside.
A stranger lay facedown on the sidewalk while two of Dominic's security men restrained him.
Marcus approached.
“Are you hurt?”
“No. Why are you here?”
“We intercepted someone climbing your back fence.”
Audrey looked at the stranger.
“Who?”
“We're finding out.”
A rear SUV door opened.
Dominic stepped out.
Audrey’s entire body stiffened.
He looked as though he hadn't slept.
He approached slowly and stopped several feet away.
“I know.”
Audrey said nothing.
Dominic removed something from inside his coat.
The ultrasound photograph.
Her throat tightened.
“You dropped it.”
Audrey stared at the picture.
For one humiliating moment, she wanted to take it from him and let him hold her.
Instead she folded her arms.
“You weren't supposed to find out that way.”
“I wasn't supposed to give you a reason to leave.”
“No. You weren't.”
Dominic accepted the blow without defending himself.
Maya remained in the doorway with the baseball bat.
Dominic glanced at it.
Maya lifted it slightly.
“Don't tempt me.”
Under different circumstances, Audrey might have laughed.
Dominic returned his attention to her.
“The man we caught had photographs of you.”
“What photographs?”
Marcus produced a phone.
There were dozens.
Audrey leaving her doctor's office.
Audrey entering Calder Tower.
Audrey at a grocery store three days earlier.
Audrey and Maya having lunch.
Fear replaced anger.
“Why?”
“We don't know yet,” Marcus said.
Dominic did.
Audrey saw it immediately.
“What aren't you telling me?”
Dominic's silence answered.
She stepped closer.
“You promised me honesty once. Try it now.”
His voice became quiet.
“Six weeks ago, the night I slept with Serena, I had just learned someone inside my organization was selling information.”
Audrey's eyes narrowed.
“What does that have to do with Serena?”
“I thought nothing.”
“Past tense.”
Dominic looked toward the captured man.
“Serena appeared at the hotel less than twenty minutes after I arrived. I never told her where I was.”
Audrey felt something cold move through her.
“You think she knew.”
“Yes.”
“You think she set you up?”
“No.”
The answer surprised her.
Dominic's jaw tightened.
“She didn't force me to betray you. Whatever Serena wanted, I made my own choice.”
For the first time that night, Audrey had no response.
He could have used Serena as an excuse.
He didn't.
Dominic continued.
“But I think she wanted you to discover us.”
“The shirt.”
“What?”
Audrey remembered.
“She said, ‘You said she wouldn't be home until seven.’”
Dominic's expression changed.
“I never said that.”
A silence fell between them.
Audrey's heartbeat accelerated.
The bedroom door.
Serena's triumphant smile.
The timing.
The photographs.
“What exactly are you saying?”
“That someone knew about your doctor's appointment. Someone knew when you'd come home.”
Audrey instinctively covered her stomach.
Dominic noticed.
Something fierce entered his expression.
“You're not staying here.”
Audrey's anger returned immediately.
“You don't decide that.”
“No. But whoever sent that man does.”
“I am not going back to the penthouse.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“Then where?”
Dominic hesitated.
“My mother's house.”
Audrey stared.
Dominic's mother, Eleanor Calder, lived on a heavily secured lakefront estate north of Chicago.
Audrey liked her.
More importantly, Eleanor had once threatened to shoot her own son's business partner for parking on her roses.
Maya lowered the bat.
“I vote for Eleanor.”
Audrey looked at her sister.
“Seriously?”
“Your husband is garbage right now. His mother, however, has cameras, guards, and a panic room.”
Dominic almost objected to the garbage remark.
Almost.
Twenty minutes later, Audrey sat inside Marcus's SUV with Maya beside her.
Dominic rode in another vehicle.
He hadn't tried to sit beside Audrey.
That mattered.
She wasn't ready to forgive him.
She wasn't even sure forgiveness was possible.
But for the first time since leaving the penthouse, she understood something frightening.
Her marriage might not be the only thing in danger.
At Calder Tower, investigators searched Serena's abandoned apartment.
They found expensive clothes.
Two passports.
A burner phone.
And, hidden inside the lining of a suitcase, a photograph taken twelve years earlier.
It showed Dominic at twenty-three.
Beside him stood his father.
And beside his father stood another young man.
Marcus received the photograph at 3:48 a.m.
He stared at the young man's face.
Then he called Dominic.
“We have a problem.”
Dominic answered immediately.
“What?”
“The man Serena's been communicating with.”
Marcus swallowed.
“You know him.”
“Who?”
May you like
Marcus looked again at the photograph.
“Your brother.”
