Chapter 5

POV: Evelyn

The afternoon air felt thick as I stood by the road with my bag held tightly in my hand, and even though people were walking past me and cars kept moving like nothing was wrong, I couldn’t shake the strange feeling sitting in my chest, a quiet discomfort that refused to go away no matter how much I tried to ignore it.

I told myself it was just stress from everything that had happened today, the divorce, the café, the way Rebecca and Samantha had spoken to me like I was nothing, but the feeling didn’t fade, and instead it slowly grew stronger until I could no longer pretend that it wasn’t there.

My eyes moved across the street without thinking, and that was when I saw it again, the same black car parked just across from where I stood but something about it felt off, something about the way it hadn’t moved since I first noticed it made my chest tighten slightly.

I frowned and looked away quickly, not wanting to make it obvious that I had noticed anything, but my heart had already started beating faster as I raised my hand and waved down a taxi, needing to leave before my thoughts could spiral any further.

The driver stopped almost immediately, and I got in without hesitation, giving him the address of the Hayes mansion despite the fact that I could still feel that lingering sense of being watched pressing quietly against me.

As the car pulled away from the curb, I sat back and stared ahead, trying to calm myself down and convince myself that I was overthinking things, but after a few seconds, I couldn’t help it anymore, and I turned my head slightly to look at the side mirror.

The black car was moving.

It stayed behind us, not too close and not too far, just enough to blend in with the rest of the traffic, but I knew it was the same one, and my fingers tightened slightly around my bag as a cold thought slipped into my mind.

Samantha.

It would make sense in a way, because she had already shown me what kind of person she was, and I wouldn’t put it past her to send someone to watch me, just to make sure I left quietly without causing any problems, but the more I thought about it, the less it felt right.

If it was Samantha, she wouldn’t hide like this, she would want me to know, she would want me to feel it, and this felt too careful, too controlled in a way that didn’t match her.

I lowered my gaze slowly and reached into my bag, pulling out my phone with slightly unsteady fingers as the message from earlier stared back at me, the words unchanged but somehow heavier the second time I read them.

“I know about the clinic visit, Evelyn, and you should know that Arthur will never believe it’s his.”

My chest tightened as I read it again, because no one was supposed to know about the clinic, not Arthur, not Rebecca, not even Samantha, and the realization that someone else did made a quiet unease settle deep inside me.

I hesitated for a moment before opening the keypad and typing a reply, my fingers pausing briefly before I pressed send.

Who is this?

The message was delivered immediately, and I stared at the screen, half expecting nothing to happen and half dreading that something would.

Then my phone vibrated in my hand.

I looked down immediately, my breath catching slightly as a new message appeared.

“You shouldn’t trust anyone in that house.”

My brows drew together as I read it, the words sinking in slowly as I tried to understand what they meant, but before I could make sense of it, my attention shifted back to the road, and I lifted my head to glance at the side mirror again.

The black car was still there, following at the same steady distance, and this time the feeling in my chest wasn’t just unease, it was something sharper, something that made it clear that this wasn’t just a coincidence.

Something was wrong.

Very wrong.

The car continued moving for a few more minutes, and I found myself checking the mirror more often than I intended to, watching it without meaning to as if I was waiting for it to do something, but just as suddenly as I had noticed it, it disappeared.

One moment it was there, and the next it was gone, with no sign of where it had turned or when it had fallen behind, and I leaned forward slightly, trying to catch a glimpse of it again, but there was nothing.

That didn’t make me feel any better.

If anything, it made things worse.

“Madam, we’re here,” the driver said, pulling up in front of the mansion gates, and I blinked once before nodding, paying him and stepping out of the car as I stood there for a moment looking at the house in front of me.

It looked exactly the same as it always had, but it didn’t feel the same anymore, and as I stared at it, I realized that it no longer felt like home.

It felt like somewhere I needed to leave.

My phone vibrated again in my hand, pulling my attention back down as I looked at the screen and saw another message from the same number.

“Leave tonight. Don’t wait.”

I stared at the words for a long moment, my thoughts going quiet as they settled in my mind. Slowly, I lifted my head and looked at the mansion again, my eyes moving over the windows and the doors as memories of the last three years passed through my mind, but this time there was no sadness in it. I had more than my fair share of misery while I was here. 

I didn’t know who was behind the messages, and I didn’t know why I was being watched, but I knew one thing for certain as my fingers tightened slightly around my phone and I turned toward the gate.

I couldn’t stay here any longer than I had to.

And if I was leaving, then I was leaving completely.