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2026-10-27 21:07:41
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Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 95
ValeriaThe peace of Bellhaven did not erode slowly; it was detonated in a single morning.By ten o'clock, the gravel lane outside the salt marsh cottage was choked with idling rental sedans and broadcast vans with satellite dishes pointed toward the gray Maine sky. Telephoto lenses on heavy monopods poked over the cedar picket fence like gun barrels, clicking continuously every time a lace curtain fluttered in the front parlor.My world had turned into a zoo enclosure.The landline on the kitchen wall shrieked with an urgency that set my teeth on edge. I snatched the receiver before the second ring could wake the twins."Valeria?" Principal Higgins’s voice was strained, breathless, and edged with sharp municipal panic. "You need to come to the elementary annex immediately. Or send someone authorized. There are half a dozen men with press passes parked on the curb outside the playground. They’re taking photographs through the chain-link fence every time the kindergarten class steps ou
Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 94
TobiasThe rain had finally tapered off, leaving Bellhaven cloaked in a suffocating shroud of sea fog. Inside the harbor inn’s third-floor suite, the atmosphere was thick with the ozone hum of encrypted terminals and cold coffee."He isn't in Florence," Marcus Vance said, his voice flat through the speakerphone. "We ran a priority check on the villa outside Fiesole. The caretaker claims Alexander hasn’t set foot on the property since last November. His credit cards in Milan and Zurich are generating automated utility charges, but the physical accounts are dormant.""Check the private charters," I barked, pacing the narrow strip of floorboards between the desk and the window. "A man with forty million dollars in blind trusts doesn't travel on commercial itineraries under his own passport.""We did," Vance replied, papers rustling on his end in Manhattan. "And that’s where it gets disturbing, Tobias. Over the past three years, six separate mid-range corporate charters out of Teterboro,
Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 93
ValeriaThe air inside the small cedar cabin in Bellhaven suddenly felt thin, as though all the warmth from the iron woodstove had been sucked out through the cracks in the floorboards.Outside, the late-autumn sea wind hissed through the hemlocks, but the sound seemed distant, muffled by the violent rushing in my ears. I stood with both hands braced against the rough pine edge of the kitchen table, staring across at Tobias.He hadn't sat down. His towering frame seemed too large for the low-ceilinged room, his face carved into grim, shadowed angles under the pale overhead bulb. Spread out before him on the scarred timber was a manila dossier stamped with the letterhead of a private forensic accounting firm in Boston."Alexander?" My voice barely made a sound. It scraped out of my throat, dry and cracked. "Your uncle Alexander? He lives in Montreal. He hasn't attended a Hayes board meeting in fifteen years.""He attends through proxies, Valeria," Tobias said, his gravelly baritone fla
Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 92
TobiasThe sting on my cheek burned cold.Outside, the autumn rain slashed against the Fifth Avenue glass, but inside the drawing room, the air had turned into an icy, suffocating vacuum."Say it," I commanded, the gravel in my throat barely louder than a rasp. "Say the rest of it, Eleanor."Eleanor's hand drifted down, trembling as it reclaimed the gold head of her cane. She leaned back against the deep crimson velvet, her posture sinking, looking older and more thoroughly shattered than I had ever seen her. The imperious matriarch was gone; in her place sat a tired, bitter architect whose grand design was crumbling to ash."Serena was weak," Eleanor murmured, her pale eyes drifting to the dying embers in the hearth. "She met him at the summer retrospective in the Hamptons. Alexander had flown in from Nice for forty-eight hours to renegotiate his trust draw. He saw a young, insecure girl who felt ignored by you, Tobias. And Alexander has spent his entire miserable existence taking wh
Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 91
TobiasThe rain had turned into a relentless, icy deluge, drumming against the roof of the SUV like a volley of lead pellets. Inside the dark cabin, the dashboard terminal hummed softly, casting a cold, greenish hue across my knuckles.*Alexander Hayes.*The name had not been spoken aloud in the Hayes estate for nearly a decade.He was my father’s younger brother by four years. Where Richard Hayes had been stiff, calculating, and molded in the exact, uncompromising image of the Hayes boardrooms, Alexander had been the family's volatile, artistic exile. He possessed the sharp, aristocratic jawline and the heavy-lidded dark eyes of our bloodline, but none of the cold, institutional discipline.I remembered the ferocious, closed-door screaming matches between Alexander and Eleanor when I was barely a teenager. They despises each other with an ancient, bone-deep venom. Eleanor viewed him as weak, erratic, and tainted by bohemian excess; Alexander viewed her as a tyrannical spider who had
Fake Death of the Stand-In Ex-Wife 90
TobiasThe boatyard smelled of cedar dust, diesel fuel, and damp brine. Rain pounded against the corrugated tin roof of the workshop, a deafening roar that did nothing to drown out the blood hammering in my ears.Adrian Cole was bent over the gunwale of a restored wooden skiff, running a block plane along raw mahogany, curls of shaved wood dropping around his work boots.I didn't knock. I shoved the double doors wide, letting the gale rush in behind me.Adrian straightened, setting the plane on a rag, wiping his forearms with a shop towel. The moment he took in my soaked coat and the murder in my eyes, his posture shifted into hard, defensive tension. "If you’re here to throw another tantrum about Valeria, Hayes, save your breath. She made the boundaries clear.""How long did you know Serena Vale?"The words came out as a low, venomous gravel, vibrating through the cold cavern of the shed.Adrian’s brow furrowed in utter, unvarnished bewilderment. He blinked, tilting his head as if I
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