Chapter 24 - The Safehouse Sanctuary
By two in the morning, the blizzard had worsened into a whiteout. I drove thirty miles an hour with my hazard lights blinking, taking secondary back roads to avoid any main corridors Julian might anticipate. Every shadow in the rearview mirror looked like a pursuing truck; every sweep of oncoming high beams made my heart seize.
I didn't dare go back to my own house. If Julian knew where to find me at Eleanor's old estate, he knew where Lily and my friend Sarah were staying.
My hands gripping the steering wheel until my knuckles turned chalky, I tapped the dashboard Bluetooth and dialed Sarah’s number. It rang four times before her groggy voice came through the speakers.
"Emma? Where are you? It's two in the morning."
"Sarah, don't ask questions, just listen to me," I said, keeping my voice steady through sheer force of will. "I need you to wake Lily up right now. Pack one bag for each of you. Do not turn on the front porch lights. Leave through the back patio, get into your car, and drive to the Carlton Hotel downtown. Book a room under your maiden name."
Sarah’s voice went instantly sharp and alert. "Emma, what happened? Did Eleanor break her bail?"
"It’s not just Eleanor," I said, tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. "Julian is here. The whole thing was a setup from the beginning. Christmas was staged. The New Year’s fight was staged. They're trying to liquidate everything and leave the country. Sarah, please. Promise me you'll get Lily out of that house right now."
"I'm waking her up this second," Sarah said firmly, the rustle of bedsheets and hurried footsteps echoing over the line. "We'll be at the Carlton in twenty minutes. Emma... be careful."
I disconnected the call and pulled into the snow-drifted parking lot of an all-night diner three miles outside the city limits. The neon sign buzzed weakly in the storm, casting a sickly red glow over the hood of my car.
I turned on the interior dome light, pulled Eleanor’s letter out of my coat, and laid it flat against the steering wheel next to the heavy iron lockbox.
*Split the six million fifty-fifty. I'll play the miserable exile in Springfield for six months until the IRS clears the audit, and then meet you in Geneva.*
My mother had looked at my daughter—a little girl who made paper snowflakes and believed her grandmother was a queen—and calculated the dollar value of breaking her heart. She had weaponized Lily's innocence to trigger my protective instincts, calculating to the dollar how much pain it would take to make me sign away our family's heritage.
I looked at the lockbox sitting on the passenger seat. In the side seam, partially obscured by dried grease, was an old brass cylinder lock.
I reached up to my neck, unclasped the thin gold chain I had worn since my father died, and slid off the small, ornate key he had given me on my eighteenth birthday.
*“Keep this close, Emma,”* Arthur had whispered from his hospice bed six years ago. *“When the house grows cold and the wolves start barking at the gate, this will tell you who you are.”*
May you like
My breath hitched. With trembling fingers, I slid the key into the lock.
It turned with a heavy, clean click.
