Chapter 2 - FIVE MINUTES TO RUINDaniel was still kneeling when the second phone call came.
This time, it was his business partner.
I recognized Michael Foster's name flashing across the screen.
Daniel snatched the phone from the floor.
“Michael, thank God. Something's wrong with the bank.”
Michael was shouting so loudly that I could hear him from several feet away.
“Wrong with the bank? Daniel, we have a catastrophe! The lender has sent a notice of default, our investors are demanding an emergency meeting, and someone has requested every financial record we've produced in the last six years!”
Daniel scrambled to his feet.
“Who?”
“Whitmore Global Holdings.”
For a moment, the room was completely silent.
Then Michael added, “Daniel, please tell me you didn't do something stupid involving Arthur Whitmore's daughter.”
Daniel looked at me.
I watched the realization spread across his face.
He knew my father was a billionaire.
What he didn't understand was that Arthur Whitmore had never stopped watching over me.
When Daniel started Blackwood Development seven years earlier, he had almost nothing except ambition and a convincing smile.
His first commercial project had failed.
His second was buried under lawsuits.
By the third, he was less than ninety days from bankruptcy.
Then an anonymous investment group stepped in.
They provided financing.
They introduced investors.
They helped restructure his debts.
Within four years, Blackwood Development became one of Manhattan's fastest-growing construction companies.
Daniel told everyone he was a self-made genius.
I let him.
I didn't know every detail of my father's involvement, but I had suspected that he had given Daniel opportunities.
I had never imagined the entire company might be standing on a foundation my father controlled.
“Emily,” Daniel said slowly, ending the call. “Tell your father to stop this.”
I stared at him.
A few minutes earlier, he had ordered me to apologize to his mistress.
Now he was asking me for help.
“Why would I?”
He looked astonished.
“Because we're married!”
Vanessa immediately stood.
“Daniel, don't beg her. Her father can't legally take everything just because he's angry.”
Daniel turned on her.
“Shut up, Vanessa!”
Her mouth fell open.
I'd never heard him speak to her like that.
Usually, he treated her like a queen.
He bought her jewelry, took her on vacations, and paid for the apartment where she supposedly lived alone.
He had even bought the black designer dress she was wearing tonight.
With money from a company that existed partly because of my family.
And somehow, I'd been the one forced to live like I should be grateful.
Daniel approached me.
“Sweetheart, listen.”
I flinched.
He stopped.
His eyes flickered toward the blood on my back.
For the first time that evening, he seemed to notice what he had done.
“Oh, God,” he muttered.
Then he reached toward my shoulder.
I pulled away.
“Don't touch me.”
“Emily, I wasn't thinking clearly.”
“You hit me twenty times.”
“Vanessa told me you stole her bracelet.”
“It's in her handbag.”
Daniel turned.
Vanessa froze.
“What?” he demanded.
I pointed toward the black leather purse resting beside her chair.
“The bracelet is in the inside pocket. She put it there before you came home.”
Vanessa laughed nervously.
“That's ridiculous.”
Daniel walked across the room and grabbed her handbag.
She tried to snatch it back.
“Daniel, don't!”
He emptied it onto the coffee table.
Lipstick.
Keys.
A compact mirror.
A hotel receipt.
And a diamond bracelet.
The same bracelet Vanessa had accused me of stealing.
Daniel stared at it.
His mouth opened.
Then closed.
Vanessa crossed her arms.
“Well, obviously, Emily must have slipped it back inside.”
I almost laughed.
Even now, she couldn't stop lying.
Daniel looked at me.
“Emily…”
I shook my head.
“No.”
He took a step closer.
“I didn't know.”
“You didn't want to know.”
His expression tightened.
“Please don't make this worse than it already is.”
I looked directly into his eyes.
“Worse for whom?”
Before he could answer, the penthouse intercom buzzed.
A frightened security guard spoke through the speaker.
“Mr. Blackwood, there are several people downstairs requesting access.”
Daniel frowned.
“Who?”
“Your father-in-law, sir. He's accompanied by a police officer and a medical response team.”
Daniel checked his watch.
It had been twelve minutes since my call.
“Tell them we're not receiving visitors.”
The security guard hesitated.
“Sir, the officers are coming upstairs.”
Daniel's face turned pale.
He rushed toward me.
“Emily, listen very carefully. If the police ask what happened, tell them we had an argument and you fell.”
I stared at him.
He gripped my wrist.
Hard.
“You understand me?”
“Let go.”
“Emily, I'm serious. You don't understand what could happen to our company!”
Our company.
Not my injuries.
Not my pain.
Not the fact that his mistress had watched him attack his wife.
The company.
He was still thinking about money.
I pulled my wrist free.
“That's the problem, Daniel. I understand everything now.”
A heavy knock sounded at the door.
“Police! Open up!”
Daniel froze.
Vanessa hurried toward the hallway.
“I should probably leave.”
“No,” I said.
She stopped.
I looked at her.
“You wanted to watch what happened to me. Now you can stay and watch what happens next.”
Another knock.
Daniel reluctantly opened the door.
My father stepped inside.
Arthur Whitmore was sixty-four years old, tall, broad-shouldered, and dressed in a dark gray coat over an immaculate suit.
The business world knew him as a ruthless negotiator.
I knew him as the man who used to braid my hair badly because my mother was too sick to do it.
He took one look at me.
And stopped breathing.
“Emily.”
My name came out broken.
He crossed the room and knelt beside me.
For the first time since the beating began, I felt safe enough to cry.
“Daddy…”
He carefully removed his coat and draped it over my shoulders.
When I winced, his face changed.
He looked toward Daniel.
I had never seen that expression before.
Not rage.
Something colder.
“Did you do this?”
Daniel opened his mouth.
“Arthur, there was a misunderstanding—”
“Did you strike my daughter?”
Daniel swallowed.
“Yes, but—”
My father turned toward the officers.
“You heard him.”
One officer asked whether I wanted medical assistance and whether I felt safe speaking in front of Daniel.
I nodded toward the paramedics.
“Please help me.”
Daniel stepped forward.
“Emily, don't do this!”
My father moved between us.
“Daniel, take one more step toward her, and you'll be explaining your behavior to the officers from the floor.”
The older officer raised a hand.
“Gentlemen, everyone remain calm.”
The paramedics helped me into a chair.
As they examined my injuries, an officer asked me what had happened.
I told him everything.
The bracelet.
The accusations.
The belt.
The twenty strikes.
Vanessa laughing.
Daniel ordering me to lie.
Each word felt like pulling a splinter from my chest.
Daniel kept interrupting.
“She was provoking me!”
“She was threatening our marriage!”
“She called her father to destroy my business!”
Finally, the officer instructed him to stop.
Vanessa attempted to slip into the kitchen.
The second officer asked her to remain available for questioning.
Then my father placed his phone on the table.
“Emily, there's something else.”
I looked up.
His expression was grim.
“For three months, our compliance team has been reviewing unusual transactions involving Blackwood Development.”
Daniel went completely still.
My father continued.
“We discovered that large sums of money were being transferred to shell companies controlled by someone connected to Daniel.”
Vanessa's hand tightened around the back of the chair.
“And yesterday,” my father said, “our investigators found something much more disturbing.”
He turned toward Daniel.
“Your late father, Richard Blackwood, was involved in the Whitmore Medical Foundation's finances eighteen years ago.”
My heart stopped.
The foundation.
My mother had founded it before she died.
“Daddy?”
He looked at me with unbearable sadness.
“Your mother's death was recorded as a tragic accident.”
I remembered the rain.
The black umbrellas.
The closed casket.
My father unable to speak at her funeral.
He swallowed.
“But last week, an old investigator contacted me. He said there was evidence that the accident may have been arranged.”
I stared at him.
“No.”
“And he mentioned one name.”
My father turned toward Daniel.
“Richard Blackwood.”
Daniel shook his head violently.
“My father had nothing to do with that!”
My father didn't move.
“How do you know what I'm talking about, Daniel?”
The question hung in the air.
Daniel's face had gone white.
Then Vanessa whispered something so quietly that I almost missed it.
“Richard wasn't supposed to leave any records.”
Everyone turned toward her.
She covered her mouth.
May you like
And I realized that the bracelet had never been the real secret in our marriage.
It was only the beginning.
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