Chapter33: Lyra’s secret visits

WREN

My jaw burned from holding a slack, vacant expression for four straight hours.

Downstairs in the drawing room, I had played my part to absolute perfection. I had sat near the cold hearth, staring blankly at the unlit logs, letting my hands tremble against my knees whenever Julian crossed the room. When he handed me the harmless sugar pill with a glass of stale water, I swallowed it without a fight, letting him stroke my hair like a man fondling a prize horse he had finally broken. He whispered about how fragile I was, how much I needed him to handle the Ashford trust before my mind completely shattered.

I hated the chalky taste on my tongue, but I hated the sickening pity in his eyes even more.

Now, midnight had settled over Ashford Manor like a wet wool blanket. The heavy drapes in my bedchamber were drawn, but I stood in the narrow space between the velvet fabric and the ice-cold glass of the bay window. Rain clawed at the windowpanes, blurring the formal Cotswolds gardens below into jagged strokes of black and slate.

My suite was on the second floor of the east wing, giving me an unobstructed view across the central courtyard toward Julian’s private study. 

A thin ribbon of warm amber light cut across the wet flagstones below.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass, taking slow, deliberate breaths. My chest still felt raw from the months of psychotropics Julian had forced into my tea before I caught on and began swapping them. Even now, off the drugs, my heart beat with a ragged, dangerous pulse whenever the house grew quiet.

Then a sudden flicker of movement near the boxwood hedges caught my eye.

It wasn’t a night guard. The patrol moved with heavy, predictable boots along the gravel paths every twenty minutes. This figure moved like a ghost swift, low, hugging the dark alcoves beneath the stone arches where the security cameras had a five-second blind spot.

Kaelen had shown me those blind spots three nights ago in the dark of the estate archives, his broad hand warm against my back, his thumb tracing the blueprint against my palm.

Every system built by an arrogant man has a flaw, Wren. We just have to wait for him to step into it.

The shadow slipped onto Julian’s lower terrace and pulled off a dark, wet hood.

I covered my mouth with my two hands,I almost landed on the floor in shock of what I saw..

Lyra.

My twenty-five-year-old half-sister. The soft, doe-eyed girl who had sat by my bedside every afternoon for six months, dabbing my forehead with cool, damp cloths, weeping softly about how heartbreaking it was to watch her brilliant older sister lose her mind.

I gripped the wooden window frame so hard that it hurt and blood dropped down to the floor,but I couldn’t feel it.

She didn’t knock on the terrace doors. She produced a small brass key from our grandmother’s old spare to the conservatory and slipped inside Julian’s study without a sound.

Through the narrow gap in the curtains, Julian appeared in the frame of light. He was wearing his dark silk night dressing gown, a crystal tumbler of scotch resting in his palm.

He didn’t startle. He didn’t reach for the small handgun he kept in his top desk drawer.

He simply smiled a slow, possessive curve of his mouth that made stomach acid rise in my throat.

Lyra walked straight into his space. There was no trace of the timid, fragile girl who feigned innocence at our family dinner table. She reached up, wrapped her slender arms around Julian’s neck, and pulled him down into a deep, lingering kiss.

My eyes filled with tears and betrayal.

Even though I had suspected it, even though Kaelen had gently warned me that Julian wasn’t operating alone, seeing it with my own eyes was a physical blade between my ribs.

This was my blood.

The sister I had protected from Duchess Beatrix’s cold, demanding wrath when we were children. The girl I had shielded from the ruthless political games of the Ashford board.

She wasn’t just letting Julian drug me.

She was sleeping with the man who was actively trying to erase my existence.

Julian pulls back, he runs his hand down Lyra’s back before turning toward the wet bar to pour her a drink.

The very second his back was turned, the air in that study shifted.

Lyra’s affectionate, docile smile instantly vanished. Her face hardened into something cold, sharp, and terrifyingly efficient.

She didn’t delay even for a moment 

She reached into the lining of her heavy coat and pulled out a sleek, black smartphone. Stepping around Julian’s heavy mahogany desk, she flipped open his master leather binder, the locked ledger containing his decrypted offshore accounts and hidden trust transfers.

Working with frightening speed, she began taking rapid, silent photographs of every single page.

I was standing and  watching near the glass, my heart kept pounding so fast against my ribs.

Page after page.

Account numbers. Routing codes. The master access keys to the shell companies Julian had spent three years building to siphon off my inheritance.

She wasn’t his devoted co-conspirator.

She was stealing his operational heart right out from under his nose.

Julian turned back , with the drink in his hand.

In a few seconds, Lyra slid the phone into her pocket, smoothing her expression back into soft, adoring innocence before turning to take the glass. She laughed at something he said, leaning her head against his shoulder like a dutiful lapdog.

I felt cold and terrifying by what I’m seeing 

Lyra wasn’t helping Julian take control of the Ashford empire for him. She was letting Julian do the dirty work of breaking me and embezzling the funds while quietly gathering the evidence to ruin him the moment the money settled.

She was setting Julian up to take the fall for massive corporate embezzlement leaving him in a federal prison, while I’m locked away in a private asylum, and herself as the sole, untainted heiress to the Ashford fortune.

She’s playing him, I realized, my skin prickling with ice. And Julian is too blinded by his own narcissism to see the knife at his ribs.

It meant my timeline was collapsing.

If Lyra exposed Julian before I could reclaim my legal power, the entire Ashford trust would freeze under court receivership, giving my grandmother, Duchess Beatrix, the perfect opening to step in and bury us all to protect the family legacy.

I needed Kaelen.

I needed his sharp, ruthless mind and the unyielding strength that had kept me grounded when everything else felt like shifting sand.

The memory of Kaelen’s rough fingers against my jaw, pulling me into the shadows of the library while Julian’s footsteps faded down the hall, rushed through my chest.

He was the only person in this suffocating house who looked at me not as a broken heiress, but as a storm waiting to break.

Hold the line a little longer, Wren, he had whispered against my skin, his silver-gray eyes dark with an intensity that burned hotter than any revenge. When we burn this place down, we burn it together.

I backed away from the window, retreating into the pitch-black shadows of my suite. My mind was racing, mapping out the ledger numbers I had just seen Lyra photograph, calculating how to turn her secret betrayal into a weapon that would dismantle both her and Julian at the exact same time.

I turned toward the dark bed, intending to retrieve the small notebook I kept hidden beneath the loose floorboard.

Then I stopped.

A faint metallic scrape echoed through the silent room.

It wasn’t raining.

It wasn’t the old stone manor settling in the wind.

It was the distinct, heavy click of my bedroom door lock turning quietly from the outside.

My whole body went cold.

Julian was still downstairs in his study with Lyra. The night guards were under strict orders never to enter my private quarters after midnight.

The brass latch slipped back with a soft, ominous thud.

The heavy oak door slowly began to swing open into the dark.