Chapter 8
Sarah froze, pressing her back against the brick wall of the house. She held her breath, listening intently over the pounding of her own heart. The night was still. No alarms blared; no security guards rushed the patio. The Grandmother arrogantly relied on the heavy front gates, ignoring the vulnerability of the back gardens.
Sarah reached through the shattered glass, unlatched the French door, and slipped inside.
The study was impeccably clean, smelling of expensive leather and polished mahogany. The bright light from the desk lamp illuminated the opulent space. Sarah didn't waste a second. She moved directly to the large, oil-painted portrait of her late father-in-law that hung on the far wall.
She gripped the heavy gilded frame and pulled. It swung outward on hidden hinges, revealing a digital keypad and a flush metal safe door.
Connor said she kept it here, Sarah thought, her mind racing. But she didn't know the code.
She stared at the keypad, panic threatening to choke her. She needed a six-digit number. What would a narcissist like her mother-in-law use? A birthday? An anniversary?
Sarah typed in Sabrina's birthday. The keypad blinked a harsh, angry red. Incorrect.
She typed in the date of her late father-in-law's death. The light blinked red again. Incorrect.
"Think," Sarah whispered to herself, her hands shaking violently. The entire estate could wake up at any moment.
She looked around the brightly lit room, her eyes landing on the heavy mahogany desk. There, framed in silver, was a picture of the Grandmother standing in front of the estate on the day she purchased it. The house was her true love, her ultimate symbol of power and control.
Sarah typed the address number of the estate, followed by the year it was built.
The keypad beeped twice, and the light flashed a brilliant, vivid green.
The heavy metal door clicked open.
Sarah let out a shaky breath and reached inside. There were stacks of cash, velvet jewelry boxes, and several thick manila envelopes. And resting at the very bottom, exactly as Connor had described, was a heavy red leather ledger.
Sarah pulled it out. She flipped it open under the bright desk lamp. The pages were filled with handwritten columns of numbers, offshore routing codes, and dates. She flipped to the date of David’s death. There it was: a transfer of $4.2 million from David’s business account into a Cayman Islands shell company.
She had it. The physical proof.
"I always knew you were a resilient little rat, Sarah."
The voice cut through the silence of the study like a knife.
Sarah whipped around, clutching the red ledger to her chest.
May you like
Standing in the doorway of the study was the Grandmother. She wore an elegant silk robe over her clothes, a long, dark firearm gripped firmly in her manicured hand. The gun was pointed directly at Sarah's chest.
Behind her stepped Sabrina, holding a heavy brass fire poker. Sabrina’s face was bruised and swollen from Sarah’s slap, her eyes burning with pure, unadulterated hatred.
