Chapter 5 - THE WOMAN ETHAN WAS SUPPOSED TO MARRYThe emergency lights flickered on in red strips along the floor.
Anna immediately pulled me behind the steel table.
Ethan moved toward the door.
“Stay here.”
“No,” I whispered.
He looked back.
“Once in your life, please listen to me.”
There was urgency in his voice.
Not command.
I hated that part of me still reacted to it.
The footsteps stopped outside.
A shadow appeared beneath the door.
Then someone knocked.
Three times.
Ethan didn't move.
A woman's voice came through.
“Ethan?”
He froze.
I recognized the name before he said it.
“Celeste?”
The door opened.
A tall blonde woman in a camel coat stood outside.
She looked like she belonged in magazines.
Perfect hair.
Perfect makeup.
Diamond earrings.
But her expression was anything except polished.
She was terrified.
“We need to leave.”
Ethan stared at her.
“How did you get in here?”
“My father sits on the bank's board.”
Of course he did.
Her eyes moved to me.
She knew exactly who I was.
“Mia.”
I stood slowly.
“You must be Celeste.”
“Yes.”
“The woman Ethan isn't engaged to.”
Ethan closed his eyes.
Celeste looked at him.
“You didn't tell her?”
“Not now.”
“Seems like you've said that a lot.”
I almost liked her for that.
Anna stepped forward.
“Why are you here?”
Celeste pulled out her phone.
“Because Victoria knows you're accessing the Carter file.”
Ethan stared at her.
“How?”
“Malcolm.”
Anna swore.
Celeste continued.
“He has alerts on anything connected to Thomas Carter.”
“Why?”
“Because he's been cleaning up your family's mess for twenty years.”
Ethan's face hardened.
“My mother's mess.”
Celeste gave him a strange look.
“You still think this is only Victoria?”
Silence.
A chill moved through me.
“What do you mean?”
Celeste looked toward the hallway.
“We need to leave first.”
We exited through a private garage.
Celeste had arrived in an SUV with a driver and two security officers.
I resisted getting inside until Anna nodded.
“This is safer than standing here.”
The city lights blurred past the windows.
I sat beside Anna.
Ethan sat opposite me.
Celeste beside him.
It felt like the world's most expensive nightmare.
Finally, I asked, “Why were you looking for me?”
Celeste exhaled.
“Because I got the same message.”
She held out her phone.
A photograph of me leaving the mansion.
Below it:
MAKE SURE SHE DOESN'T SPEAK TO RICHARD.
I stared at her.
“Who sent it?”
“Burner number.”
“Why send it to you?”
“Because Victoria assumes I'll protect my future marriage.”
I looked at Ethan.
He stared at the floor.
Celeste gave a small, humorless smile.
“For the record, I have no intention of marrying him.”
“Thank you,” I said. “That makes one of us who knew.”
She almost smiled.
Then her expression changed.
“There is something you need to understand.”
She leaned forward.
“The engagement wasn't romantic. It was corporate.”
“Meaning?”
“My family's investment group owns twelve percent of Whitmore Capital.”
Anna nodded slowly.
“A marriage would consolidate voting power.”
“Exactly.”
Celeste looked at me.
“But if Mia owns Thomas Carter's original shares…”
“Seventeen percent,” Anna said.
Celeste's eyes widened.
“Then she could become the largest individual voting shareholder outside the Whitmore family trust.”
I stared at them.
“I deliver food.”
“No,” Celeste said.
“You did.”
That sentence unsettled me more than I expected.
We arrived at a penthouse overlooking Lake Michigan.
Celeste apparently owned it.
Naturally.
Once inside, Anna locked the door.
Ethan stood near the windows.
I stayed as far from him as possible.
Celeste poured water for everyone.
Then she looked at me.
“Victoria didn't choose you because you're poor.”
I waited.
“She chose you because of your father.”
“I know.”
“No. You don't know all of it.”
Ethan turned.
“Celeste.”
She ignored him.
“Three years ago, when Ethan walked away from the company, Victoria hired investigators to monitor him.”
My eyes shifted to Ethan.
He looked shocked.
“She did what?”
“You really didn't know?”
“No.”
Celeste sighed.
“One investigator noticed he was dating a woman named Mia Carter.”
My stomach dropped.
“She ran your background.”
I already knew where this was going.
“She discovered Thomas Carter was my father.”
“Yes.”
“When?”
“Almost immediately.”
Three years.
Victoria had known for almost three years.
“Why didn't she stop us?”
Celeste's expression tightened.
“That is what I couldn't understand.”
Ethan moved away from the window.
“Until?”
“Until six months ago.”
She walked to a desk and took out a tablet.
“There was a private board meeting. My father attended.”
She opened a scanned document.
A clause in an old partnership agreement.
Anna leaned over it.
“Oh my God.”
“What?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“When your father created the family trust, he included a succession provision.”
“In English?”
“If his direct heir ever had a child with a Whitmore descendant, specific voting rights would combine temporarily under the child's trust.”
I stared at her.
“What does that mean?”
Celeste answered.
“It means your baby could eventually control almost a third of Whitmore Capital.”
The room went silent.
My hand moved to my stomach.
Ethan looked ill.
“I didn't know.”
I looked at him.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
“How can I believe anything you say?”
He had no answer.
Celeste continued.
“That is why Victoria needed to know whether you were pregnant.”
“Then why would she let us stay together?”
“She thought Ethan would get bored.”
He flinched.
“She expected the relationship to end naturally.”
“But it didn't.”
“No.”
“So she brought me to the mansion.”
“Yes.”
“To confirm.”
Celeste nodded.
My skin crawled.
The dress.
The debt.
The job.
It had all been designed to bring me close enough to watch.
I turned toward Ethan.
“Did you know she arranged the dress accident?”
“No.”
“You knew she was investigating my father.”
“Not until last year.”
“You knew about the trust?”
“No.”
“You knew about the shares?”
“Parts of it.”
“How many more parts am I going to discover tomorrow?”
His eyes filled with pain.
“I don't know.”
For once, that sounded truthful.
My phone vibrated.
Another unknown number.
This time I showed Anna.
A video.
The image was dark.
Someone was sitting in a chair.
An older woman.
Her face hidden by shadows.
Then she looked up.
I stopped breathing.
“Mom?”
My mother had died when I was nineteen.
Cancer.
I had held her hand in hospice.
I had watched them close the body bag.
But the woman on the video—
She looked exactly like her.
Older.
Thinner.
Alive.
A distorted voice spoke behind the camera.
“Mia Carter. Come to the address we send tomorrow.”
The woman whispered.
“Mia…”
My knees nearly collapsed.
Ethan grabbed me.
I shoved him away.
The video continued.
“If you involve police, attorneys, or the Whitmores, she disappears permanently.”
The screen went black.
I stared at it.
“No.”
Anna looked horrified.
“Mia…”
“My mother is dead.”
Celeste whispered, “Are you sure?”
I rounded on her.
“I buried her.”
No one spoke.
Then the phone vibrated again.
An address appeared.
An abandoned industrial building outside Joliet.
Tomorrow.
10:00 a.m.
ALONE.
Ethan stepped closer.
“You're not going.”
I looked at him.
“You don't get a vote.”
“Mia, this could be a trap.”
“If that's my mother—”
“It isn't.”
“How do you know?”
“Because your mother died.”
“So did my father's company.”
His jaw tightened.
I grabbed my coat.
Anna stood.
“Where are you going?”
“To think.”
“You shouldn't be alone.”
I looked around the penthouse.
At the billionaire heir.
At his supposed fiancée.
At the attorney investigating his family.
At the evidence that my entire childhood might have been constructed around secrets.
“I've never been less alone.”
I walked into the guest room and locked the door.
For twenty minutes, I sat on the floor.
Then I opened the ultrasound photograph again.
Tiny.
Fragile.
Seven weeks.
I pressed my hand over my stomach.
“I don't know what I'm doing,” I whispered.
My phone buzzed.
Not the burner number.
A voicemail notification.
From an old number I hadn't seen in years.
My mother's number.
Impossible.
I pressed play.
Her voice filled the room.
Older.
Weak.
Real.
“Mia, sweetheart.”
I covered my mouth.
“If you're hearing this, they finally found you.”
I began crying.
“I need you to understand something.”
A pause.
“I never died.”
My entire body went cold.
“I was forced to disappear.”
May you like
Then came the words that would destroy the last piece of the life I thought I knew.
“And Richard Whitmore helped me do it.”
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