Chapter 2 - THE WOMAN CARRYING THE SYRINGEI had spent sixty-eight years learning that anger usually lies to you.
It tells you to hit first.
Shout first.
Break something.
Make the person who hurt your family feel exactly what they made you feel.
But anger had never seen my son chained to a basement wall.
Sabrina’s heels came closer.
My fingers tightened around the pipe until my knuckles hurt.
Wyatt shook his head.
“Please.”
He was right.
If I attacked Sabrina in the darkness, Irving could tell the guests I had broken into the house.
They could claim Wyatt was intoxicated.
They could hide whatever evidence remained.
And if Sabrina had planned this carefully enough to forge insurance paperwork, she had probably planned for resistance too.
So I disappeared behind the furnace.
Sabrina entered the basement.
The light came on.
Through a narrow gap between pipes, I watched my daughter-in-law cross the concrete floor.
She looked immaculate.
Perfect makeup.
Diamond earrings.
Black sequined dress.
Champagne glass in one hand.
A medical case in the other.
She looked like a woman stepping away from a party for thirty seconds.
Not a wife coming to murder her husband.
Wyatt slumped against the wall.
“Happy New Year,” Sabrina said.
He stared at her.
“How much am I worth?”
Sabrina stopped.
Apparently she hadn’t expected the question.
Then she smiled.
“More dead than alive.”
My jaw locked.
She placed her champagne on the workbench and opened the medical case.
Inside were three syringes, several small vials, alcohol wipes, and prescription bottles.
Wyatt looked at them.
“What are you using?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
“You’ll be unconscious.”
“And afterward?”
Sabrina sighed.
“Afterward, Dad removes the chain. We put you beside the vodka. Your fingerprints are already on several bottles.”
“How?”
“You drink from that bar constantly.”
“I barely drink.”
“That isn’t what people think anymore.”
She took out her phone.
“You’d be surprised how easy it is to create a reputation when nobody bothers checking.”
She showed him something.
I couldn’t see the screen.
Wyatt could.
His expression changed.
Sabrina laughed softly.
“Three months of messages. Arguments. Complaints about stress. Comments about pills. All from your number.”
“You cloned my phone.”
“I borrowed your cloud account.”
“You planned this for months.”
“No.”
For the first time, her face hardened.
“I planned to leave you.”
Then she shrugged.
“My father found a better solution.”
I memorized every word.
My phone was recording from inside my jacket.
Sabrina filled a syringe.
Wyatt watched her.
“You forged my signature on the policies.”
“Technically, you authorized your company officers to make certain financial decisions.”
“Insurance on my life isn’t a routine business decision.”
“Court can argue about that after you’re buried.”
“And the beneficiary?”
She smiled.
“Me.”
“What about my company?”
“Sold.”
“To Irving?”
“A private holding group.”
“My employees?”
“Not my problem.”
Wyatt closed his eyes.
That hurt him almost more than his knee.
His company employed eighty-three people.
Some had worked beside him since he owned nothing but one truck and a borrowed concrete mixer.
“You won’t get away with it,” he said.
Sabrina crouched beside him.
“Wyatt, look upstairs.”
The ceiling vibrated with music.
“Your friends are drinking my champagne. Your neighbors watched me care for my ‘sick husband’ all week. Your doctor knows you’ve been stressed. Your business records show financial pressure.”
She touched his cheek.
“And your father hasn’t spoken to you in days.”
Wyatt’s gaze flicked, involuntarily, toward the furnace.
Sabrina followed it.
I stopped breathing.
For one endless second, she stared directly at where I was hiding.
Then someone shouted from upstairs.
“Sabrina!”
She looked toward the staircase.
“What?”
Irving called down.
“We’ve got a problem with Grant!”
Sabrina cursed.
She capped the syringe.
Wyatt said, “Who’s Grant?”
“Your accountant.”
My pulse jumped.
Sabrina snapped the case shut.
“I’ll be back.”
She started upstairs.
Then stopped and turned.
“You know what I almost admire about you?”
Wyatt didn’t answer.
“You really believed loving somebody protected you from them.”
She climbed away.
The door shut.
I waited five seconds before moving.
Wyatt whispered, “Grant knows.”
“What does he know?”
“He called me before Christmas. Said he found irregular transfers.”
“Where?”
“Company accounts.”
“How much?”
“Almost four million.”
I stared at him.
“And now he’s upstairs?”
“I didn’t invite him.”
“Sabrina must have.”
“No. She would never.”
That meant Grant had come voluntarily.
Maybe because he had finally understood what was happening.
I checked Wyatt’s chain.
Heavy hardened steel.
Padlocked.
“What opens this?”
“Irving has the key.”
“Can we cut it?”
“Not quietly.”
I looked at his knee.
“You can’t walk anyway.”
“I can crawl.”
“No.”
“Dad—”
“I’m not leaving you.”
“You may have to.”
I pulled my phone from my jacket and showed him the recording.
His eyes widened.
“You got her?”
“Every word.”
For the first time since I entered the basement, hope appeared in my son’s face.
Then shouting erupted upstairs.
A man yelled.
A glass shattered.
Another voice shouted, “Get your hands off me!”
Grant.
I stood.
“Stay awake.”
“Where are you going?”
“Upstairs.”
Wyatt grabbed my sleeve.
“They’ll recognize you.”
“That’s the idea.”
“No. Dad. You need more evidence.”
I looked toward the ceiling.
He was right again.
Damn him.
I had raised a stubbornly intelligent son.
Then I remembered something.
When Wyatt built the house, I had insisted on installing a dumbwaiter-style service shaft between the basement workshop and pantry.
He had called it unnecessary.
I called it practical.
“What?” Wyatt asked.
“There may be another way upstairs.”
I found the narrow service door.
Still operational.
Too small for a man.
Large enough for a phone.
I activated video recording, slid the device onto the platform, and quietly raised it.
The camera emerged behind a pantry cabinet.
Voices became clearer.
Grant was shouting.
“I know what you did!”
Irving answered calmly.
“You’ve had too much to drink.”
“I haven’t touched alcohol!”
“Then you’re embarrassing yourself sober.”
I watched through the screen.
Grant Holloway stood near the kitchen entrance.
Forty-seven.
Glasses.
Blue suit.
He looked terrified.
Sabrina stood between him and the ballroom.
“What exactly are you accusing us of?” she asked.
Grant reached into his jacket.
“Insurance fraud. Embezzlement. Forgery.”
Several guests turned.
Sabrina’s expression didn’t change.
Grant pulled out an envelope.
“And whatever you’re planning tonight.”
Irving moved faster than I expected.
He seized Grant’s wrist.
Grant shouted.
The envelope fell.
Documents spilled across the floor.
A guest bent down automatically.
Sabrina screamed.
“Don’t touch those!”
Too late.
The man picked up a page.
His expression changed.
“What is this?”
Sabrina snatched it away.
Grant pointed toward the floor.
“Ask her why Wyatt’s life insurance payout was increased to sixteen million dollars three weeks ago.”
Silence swept through the room.
Then Sabrina laughed.
A perfect laugh.
Almost convincing.
“My husband owns a construction company. Key-person insurance is normal.”
Grant shook his head.
“Not when his wife secretly changes the beneficiary.”
Irving grabbed him.
Two men moved forward.
Guests began filming.
Everything was changing.
Sabrina looked toward the basement door.
And I saw the moment she understood.
Her schedule was collapsing.
She shoved past Grant.
“Dad, keep everyone upstairs.”
Then she hurried toward the basement.
Wyatt heard her coming too.
His eyes met mine.
This time, Sabrina wasn’t carrying a champagne glass.
She was carrying the syringe.
May you like
And she no longer had twelve-fifteen.
She needed my son dead now.
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