Chapter Six: First Blood

Elena

Files received. First move made. Sleep well, Mrs Blackwood.

I must have read that message ten times before the words stopped meaning anything. Sleep well. I actually laughed once, alone in the dark kitchen, a short flat sound that didn't even sound like me. As if sleep was still something my life had room for.

My hands wouldn't stop shaking. Not the small tremor I'd gotten used to from the cancer. This was something else. Plain fear, the kind I remember from being a kid at the top of a diving board, except this time there was no one waiting underneath to catch me.

I thought about my mother for a second, I don't know why. Maybe some part of me wanted someone, anyone, to tell me I was doing the right thing.

She would have hated this. She would have hated what I'd turned into to make it happen. And still I sat there in the dark and I didn't undo it. I couldn't. There wasn't time left to be the kind of woman who takes things back.

I forced myself to breathe until my hands settled. Upstairs my husband was sleeping soundly next to a lie he didn't even know existed yet. That gap between what he believed and what was actually true felt, for one strange second, like the only power I had left.

I decided something sitting there with my knees pulled to my chest on that kitchen stool. I wasn't going to wait around for him to come after me. I was going to hear him coming first, every time, for however long I had.

By morning there was a man at the gate I'd never seen before.

I saw him from my window before I even smelled coffee, before Marcus's side of the bed had gone cold. Dark jacket, standing too still. The old guard used to slouch there half asleep on his phone. This one didn't touch his phone at all. He watched the driveway like it owed him something. He watched my car a second longer than made sense.

My stomach dropped before I'd even finished putting it together.

Downstairs there was a second thing. A small black camera above the garden door, screwed in clean, no dust on it yet. I stood under it for a moment just looking up, feeling watched in my own house for the first time in five years of living in it.

Marcus was already at the table. Dressed, composed, that watch on his wrist, the one I'd bought quietly with my own savings, still catching the morning light like nothing had ever gone wrong between us.

"Sleep alright?" he asked, and there was a weight under it, like he was watching to see which way I'd tilt.

I held his eyes even though my heart was slamming. "Fine," I said. "Did we hire more security?"

"Just being cautious. There's been some noise about a leak at the firm." He studied my face the way he used to study men across a boardroom table right before he ruined them. "You haven't noticed anyone strange lately, have you? Any calls you didn't expect?"

For a second I actually believed he could see straight through me. I had to fight the urge to look away, because looking away is what guilty people do.

"Should I have?" I said instead.

"No reason." He smiled, that old warm smile that used to melt something in my chest. It didn't reach his eyes. Maybe it never had.

I knew that smile. He got feelings the way other men got proof, and in five years I'd never once seen him wrong.

"Varner's coming by the office today," he said, standing, buttoning his jacket. "In case anyone asks."

"Why would anyone ask?"

He paused at the door a second too long. "No reason," he said again, and left.

He already suspected someone close to him was working against him. He just didn't know yet if it was me.

I gave it an hour. Then I locked myself in the guest bathroom, the one room I was fairly sure didn't have a camera yet, and called the number I'd memorized off a file on his desk. My hands shook so badly I had to try twice.

He picked up on the second ring. "This is a number that shouldn't have my number."

"I know exactly who you are, Mr. Varner. I know what he pays you. I know he had you in his study past midnight asking questions about his wife."

A pause. Not fear. Calculation.

"You understand what you're doing right now, Mrs. Blackwood." His voice was flat, bored almost, like he'd had this exact conversation before and watched it fail every time. "Calling a stranger, on a number you shouldn't have, asking him to betray the man who signs his checks."

"I'm not asking you to betray anyone. I'm asking you to remember there are two people who could pay you, and only one of them is currently sitting on the edge of an investigation."

"Marcus Blackwood isn't under investigation. Not yet. Whatever you have hasn't moved fast enough to matter."

"It will."

"That's a promise a lot of angry wives have made me over the years," he said, and something in how he said it made my chest hurt, because it meant I wasn't the first, and none of them had made it out either. "None of them delivered. What makes you different?"

For a second I had nothing. Just my own heartbeat, too loud, in a bathroom that used to feel safe and didn't anymore.

"Because I'm not angry," I said finally, and my voice cracked on the last word and I let it. "Angry wives want to hurt him. I want him gone. That's the difference between someone who might change her mind in six months and someone who has three weeks to make sure she doesn't."

Silence. Longer this time.

"What does that mean," he said, quieter now, "three weeks."

"It means I don't have the luxury of being careful with you, and you don't have the luxury of being careful with me. I need to know whose side you're on. Today. Not eventually. I don't have eventually anymore."

"I haven't decided," he said, and it wasn't a no. "Don't call this number again. If I decide something, I'll find you."

The line went dead.

I stood gripping the sink, furious at how much I'd given away and how little I'd gotten back. But underneath that, something steadier. He hadn't said no. He hadn't run to Marcus either, or that man at the gate would already know my face.

Sophia was in the kitchen when I came down, keys in hand, and something in her face stopped me before I could say good morning.

"He asked me about you this morning," she said. "Before you were up. Whether you'd been acting strange."

My mouth went dry. "What did you tell him?"

"That you'd been tired. Because of the diagnosis." She looked at me carefully. "He didn't believe me."

So it wasn't only the gates now. He was asking the people who slept under his roof to watch me too.

"He's not stupid," Sophia said. "Whatever this is, he's already circling it. I'd be careful how many more calls you make from this house."

Something cold moved through me. "How do you know I made a call?"

She didn't answer, and that silence told me more than words would have.

"Ten weeks," she said instead, so quiet I almost missed it, her hand drifting to her stomach and away again. "I found out the same week he started talking about your headaches like a schedule he was waiting on."

"You should go," I said, "before he wonders why we're both standing here too long."

She left slower than she needed to, glancing back once like there was something else she wasn't ready to say yet.

I was upstairs drying my hair an hour later when my phone buzzed on the counter.

Unknown number.

Varner reported the call.

The blood left my face so fast the room actually tilted. I read it twice, certain I'd misunderstood it, but the words stayed exactly the same both times.

Then another message came through, thirty seconds later, same number.

He didn't tell Marcus what you said. He told him something else. He told him you know about the accident.

The towel slipped out of my hands.

There was only one accident that word could mean. I had never said a single word about that to Varner. Not once. Not to anyone still breathing.

Which meant someone else already knew exactly what I knew.

And they had reached my husband first.