Chapter 2 - The House Had Ears
For several seconds, nobody moved.
The silence inside Adrian’s bedroom felt different now.
Not awkward.
Dangerous.
Adrian was the first to speak.
“Lock the door.”
Caroline’s head snapped toward him.
“Excuse me?”
He didn’t raise his voice.
That somehow made it worse.
“Lock. The door.”
I had worked inside the Prescott mansion for eleven months, and during that time I had seen Adrian negotiate acquisitions over breakfast, fire a senior executive while calmly buttering toast, and end a phone call with a senator without ever changing his expression.
I had never seen him look at his sister the way he looked at her then.
Caroline shut the door.
Adrian held out his hand.
“My phone,” she said.
“Your phone.”
“You don’t have the right to take it.”
“I have the right to know whether you just sent a photograph of an unconscious employee to the board.”
Caroline laughed once.
There was no humor in it.
“She wasn’t unconscious when I took the picture.”
“She had been unconscious three minutes earlier.”
“Convenient.”
“Caroline.”
Something in Adrian’s voice made her finally place the phone in his hand.
He checked the screen.
The photograph was there.
So was an unsent email draft addressed to three Prescott Group board members.
Subject: GOVERNANCE CONCERN.
My stomach dropped.
Adrian saw it too.
“You were actually going to do it.”
Caroline folded her arms.
“I was going to protect this company.”
“From Lucia?”
“From you.”
That landed harder than I expected.
Adrian stared at his sister.
Caroline pointed toward me.
“You don’t think people are going to care that our CEO has feelings for a twenty-three-year-old employee who works inside his house?”
“I have never touched her.”
“That won’t matter.”
“Then why threaten her?”
Caroline looked at the folder.
I watched the calculation pass through her eyes.
“I told her to stop snooping.”
“That isn’t an answer.”
“She works here to clean the house, Adrian. Not audit a multibillion-dollar company.”
“I’m standing right here,” I said.
Caroline turned.
For a moment, something changed in her expression.
Not anger.
Fear.
“Then listen carefully,” she said. “You have no idea what you stepped into.”
My phone was still in my hand.
I turned the screen toward Adrian.
He read the threat twice.
“When did this arrive?”
“Thirty seconds ago.”
Caroline immediately shook her head.
“I didn’t send it.”
“Did you know it was coming?”
“No.”
“You stared at her phone before she even showed it to us.”
“Because it buzzed!”
Adrian studied her.
I did too.
Maybe she was lying.
Maybe she wasn’t.
That uncertainty frightened me more than certainty would have.
Adrian called someone.
“Malcolm. Upstairs. Now.”
Caroline went completely still.
I noticed.
“Who’s Malcolm?” I asked.
“Our head of security,” Adrian said.
Two minutes later, Malcolm Pierce entered.
He was somewhere in his late forties, tall and broad shouldered, with short gray hair and the calm expression of a man trained not to react to anything.
I had seen him around the estate hundreds of times.
Checking cameras.
Speaking quietly to drivers.
Walking the grounds after dark.
He had always been polite to me.
Maybe too polite.
Adrian handed him my phone.
“Trace that message.”
Malcolm barely glanced at the screen.
“You should have left when she warned you?”
My heart stopped.
Adrian’s eyes immediately shifted toward him.
So did Caroline’s.
Nobody had read the message aloud.
Malcolm seemed to realize his mistake.
A fraction too late.
“I saw the preview when I entered,” he said.
I looked at my phone.
The screen had already gone dark.
Adrian held Malcolm’s gaze.
“Did you?”
Malcolm remained calm.
“Yes.”
“Trace it.”
“Of course.”
He left the room with my phone.
The moment the door closed, I looked at Adrian.
“He knew.”
“I know.”
Caroline whispered a curse.
Adrian turned on her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What do you know about Malcolm?”
“Nothing.”
“Stop lying to me.”
“I am not lying.”
He stepped closer.
“You wrote REMOVE LUCIA BEFORE FRIDAY.”
Caroline’s composure finally cracked.
“Yes.”
My chest tightened.
Adrian looked like she had slapped him.
Caroline swallowed.
“I wrote it.”
“Why?”
“Because Graham told me she had been accessing files she wasn’t authorized to see.”
“Graham?”
The name meant something inside this family.
Adrian went silent.
I had only met Graham Prescott twice.
Adrian and Caroline’s uncle.
Their father’s younger brother.
Chairman of Prescott Group’s board.
He lived mostly in Manhattan but maintained rooms in the west wing of the Greenwich estate.
Everyone spoke about him with the careful respect reserved for men who possessed both money and memory.
“He told you to fire her?” Adrian asked.
Caroline rubbed her forehead.
“He told me Lucia was becoming a liability.”
“And you just obeyed him?”
“I was trying to keep her out of this.”
I stared at her.
“You threatened me.”
“Yes.”
“You were going to destroy my reputation.”
“If destroying your reputation made you quit, you would still be alive.”
The room went dead silent.
My pulse started hammering.
Adrian stepped toward his sister.
“What the hell does that mean?”
Caroline immediately shook her head.
“I shouldn’t have said that.”
“You think?”
“Adrian, I need you to understand something. The invoices she found are not random errors.”
“I figured that out.”
“No. You haven’t.”
She pointed toward the folder.
“The companies tied to those transfers don’t just touch procurement. They touch real estate, insurance, pension assets, overseas subsidiaries, and the Prescott Foundation.”
I felt cold.
“How much?” Adrian asked.
“I don’t know.”
“You’re the CFO.”
“I said I don’t know.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
Caroline’s eyes filled with something I had never seen in them before.
Shame.
“Somewhere above forty million.”
I actually stopped breathing.
Adrian picked up the folder again.
“Forty million dollars disappeared from my company and you didn’t tell me?”
“I didn’t say it disappeared.”
“What would you call it?”
“Moved.”
“By whom?”
Caroline looked toward the closed door.
“Keep your voice down.”
Adrian almost laughed.
“In my own bedroom?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.”
A cold sensation moved across my skin.
The house had ears.
Maybe literally.
Adrian walked toward a painting near his bookshelf and pulled it off the wall.
Nothing.
Then he checked beneath the desk.
Behind the television.
Inside a smoke detector.
I started helping without being asked.
When I moved near the lamp beside the bed, I saw a tiny black dot underneath the wooden base.
At first I thought it was a screw.
Then I touched it.
A thin wire disappeared beneath the carpet.
“Adrian.”
He crossed the room.
The expression on his face changed immediately.
A microphone.
Inside his bedroom.
Caroline closed her eyes.
“Oh God.”
Adrian ripped the device free.
“How long?”
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
He stared at his sister.
“You knew someone was listening?”
“I suspected.”
“And you said nothing?”
“I was trying to figure out who I could trust.”
I almost laughed from sheer disbelief.
“You took a picture of me in his bed.”
Caroline looked at me.
“I never said I was good at it.”
That was the first honest thing she had said.
Adrian took my folder and shoved it inside a leather document case.
“We’re leaving.”
Caroline stepped forward.
“No.”
“I’m getting Lucia out of this house.”
“That may already be impossible.”
“Why?”
“Because Friday isn’t a random deadline.”
She looked at me.
Then Adrian.
“The Prescott Group audit committee receives the quarterly vendor report Friday morning.”
Adrian’s face hardened.
“Meaning whoever is behind this needs Lucia gone before the report can be questioned.”
Caroline nodded.
“And if Lucia’s copies exist outside this house, they’ll want those too.”
I suddenly remembered my apartment.
My laptop.
The backup drive where I had stored scans.
“My computer.”
Adrian looked at me.
“What?”
“There are copies at my apartment.”
“We go now.”
We left through the rear entrance instead of the front.
Adrian insisted on driving himself.
He refused to use the estate security team.
Caroline stayed behind, claiming somebody needed to behave as if nothing had happened.
I didn’t know whether to trust her.
Neither did Adrian.
During the drive, neither of us spoke about what he had admitted earlier.
I care about you.
Compared with forty-seven million dollars in suspicious transfers and a listening device under his lamp, romantic tension seemed almost ridiculous.
Almost.
When we reached my apartment building twenty-five minutes later, the front door was unlocked.
I knew immediately.
“I locked that.”
Adrian moved in front of me.
“Stay here.”
“It’s my apartment.”
“Lucia.”
“I said it’s my apartment.”
We entered together.
My living room had been destroyed.
Couch cushions sliced open.
Desk drawers dumped onto the floor.
Books scattered everywhere.
My night-class textbooks had been torn apart.
The laptop was gone.
So was my backup drive.
I felt sick.
Adrian walked carefully toward my desk.
“They knew where the copies were.”
“How?”
Then I remembered the microphone.
Maybe there were more.
Maybe they had been listening for weeks.
I ran into my bedroom.
My mattress had been flipped over.
Closet emptied.
Nothing valuable had been taken.
Only information.
My phone buzzed again.
Another unknown number.
I didn’t want to look.
I forced myself.
YOU’VE LOST THE FILES.
NOW WALK AWAY.
Adrian read over my shoulder.
His jaw tightened.
Another message appeared.
OR YOUR MOTHER LOSES MORE THAN HER JOB.
Everything inside me froze.
“My mother?”
Adrian looked at me.
“They know about her.”
My mother worked mornings at a bakery in Port Chester.
She had nothing to do with Prescott Group.
Nothing.
I dialed her number.
No answer.
Again.
No answer.
“Lucia—”
I grabbed my coat.
“I’m going to her.”
“I’ll drive.”
We ran downstairs.
Adrian unlocked his SUV.
I reached for the passenger door.
Then something beneath the vehicle caught my eye.
A small dark puddle.
Adrian crouched.
Touched it.
Smelled his fingers.
His expression changed.
“Brake fluid.”
We both looked underneath the SUV.
May you like
The brake line had been sliced clean through.
And from across the street, inside a black sedan with tinted windows, someone started the engine.
