Chapter 2
Water crashed across the marble floor and took me with it.
I fell forward with the broken wave, coughing, shaking, gasping like my lungs had forgotten air.
Strong arms caught me before my head struck the floor.
Elias Thorne dropped the sledgehammer and wrapped his coat around me.
“Breathe,” he said.
One word.
Firm.
Controlled.
I tried.
My chest burned.
My hands shook so violently I could not hold the coat closed.
Behind him, the Whitmores began shouting.
Charles yelled about trespassing.
Beatrice screamed that Elias had destroyed priceless property.
Grant cursed.
Vivian still held her phone, but she was no longer recording.
Elias looked over his shoulder.
“Call emergency services,” he said.
Nobody moved.
His eyes shifted to Peter.
“Now.”
Peter fumbled his phone from his pocket.
I clutched Elias’s sleeve.
“How did you know?” I whispered.
His expression changed.
Only slightly.
“Adrian called me.”
My heart stopped.
“Adrian?”
Elias nodded once.
“He was supposed to be here tonight.”
The room tilted.
I coughed again, and he steadied me.
Charles stepped forward.
“This is family business.”
Elias stood slowly, placing himself between them and me.
“You locked a woman in a sealed case and filled it with water.”
“She attacked us,” Beatrice snapped.
I stared at her.
Even half-drowned, I almost laughed.
Elias’s gaze moved to the security camera in the corner.
“Then you won’t mind showing police the footage.”
Silence fell.
That was when I saw fear enter the Whitmore family.
Not guilt.
Fear.
They had never feared hurting me.
They feared being seen.
Sirens wailed in the distance.
Elias crouched again.
“What is your name?”
“Clara,” I whispered.
“Clara Whitmore?”
I flinched at the last name.
He noticed.
“Clara Vale,” I said.
“My name before them.”
He nodded.
“Hold on to that.”
The police arrived with paramedics.
I was lifted onto a stretcher while the Whitmores shouted over one another.
Charles claimed I had been drunk.
Beatrice said I had locked myself inside.
Vivian cried that it was a prank.
Elias handed his phone to an officer.
“I received a live call from Adrian Whitmore at 9:12 p.m. He believed his wife was in danger.”
The officer looked at me.
Then at the shattered case.
Then at the hose still spilling water across the floor.
May you like
Charles went pale.
For the first time since I married Adrian, his family had no room left to perform.
