Chapter 4 - The Sound of Strategy
I remained under the bed, a ghost in my own bridal suite, listening to the blueprint of my life being torn apart.
"The next phase starts tomorrow," Vanessa said, her voice pacing near the foot of the bed. "Ethan, you start acting concerned. Tell people she’s been acting strange since the wedding. Maybe she’s having a nervous breakdown."
"She’ll deny it," Ethan said, sounding bored.
"That’s exactly what a hysterical woman would do," Vanessa replied. "We’ll pick up the pace of the legal filings. By the time she realizes what's happening, she'll have signed away her rights, her home, and her reputation. A woman like that doesn't have the stomach for a public fight."
I heard the sound of champagne being poured. They were toasting to my ruin.
"And me?" Monica asked. "What happens when you marry me?"
"You get the life she thinks she has," Ethan promised.
My mind raced. How could they be so confident? I wasn't just some girl from the street; I was the daughter of Richard Carter. But Ethan thought my parents were dead, and I had let him believe it because I wanted to be loved for me, not for the name I carried. I had played the part of the modest archivist so well that he had built his entire scheme on the assumption that I had no one to call for help.
He was wrong.
My father was not a man of sentiment. He was a man of cold, hard logistics. If I could get out of here, if I could get this recording to his lead attorney, Ethan Grant wouldn't just be out of a marriage. He would be out of the corporate world entirely.
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"I need to leave," I whispered to myself, my teeth clenched so hard my jaw ached.
I waited until the bedroom door clicked shut. I waited until their voices faded into the distance of the hallway. Only then did I slide out, my dress covered in dust, my heart a hollow, frozen shell. I didn't look in the mirror. I didn't look at the bed. I walked out into the night, the predator now hunting the hunter.
