Chapter 2 - The Severed Steel
The ringing in my ears was deafening. I lay at the foot of the sweeping marble staircase, my hands instinctively protective over my swollen stomach. The pain of the fall was nothing compared to the terrifying, thunderous roar of three tons of crystal and brass obliterating the foyer.
A suffocating cloud of plaster dust and pulverized crystal billowed outward, blanketing the grand entrance of the Sterling estate in a ghostly white shroud. Through the haze, I could barely see Sarah, our quiet, twenty-two-year-old maid. She was on her knees halfway down the stairs, her uniform torn, her face streaked with soot, panting as she stared at the devastation below.
She had thrown her entire weight into me. She had shoved me. My first instinct had been betrayal, a fleeting second of absolute terror believing the woman we trusted had tried to kill my unborn child.
But now, staring at the jagged iron core of the chandelier resting exactly where my feet had been moments prior, the truth was blinding. She hadn’t attacked me. She had saved my life.
"Emily!"
The heavy oak front door slammed open. My husband, Julian, burst into the foyer. His face was a mask of calculated panic, his breathing ragged as if he had just run a marathon. He looked at the shattered remains of the chandelier, then his eyes darted to me at the bottom of the stairs, and finally up to Sarah.
"You!" Julian roared, his voice bouncing off the high, damaged ceilings. He leaped over the debris, his expensive leather shoes crunching loudly on the broken crystal. He grabbed Sarah by her collar, hauling her to her feet with a violence I had never seen in him. "You pushed my wife! I saw you from the driveway! You threw her down the stairs!"
"Julian, stop!" I tried to scream, but my voice was a raspy whisper, my lungs clogged with plaster dust. "She... she saved me..."
Julian didn't listen. His hands were shaking with a rage that felt entirely too manufactured. He shoved Sarah back against the banister. "I'm calling the police. You’re going to prison for attempted murder, you crazy bitch!"
As Julian reached into his coat pocket to pull out his phone, his hand jerked too quickly. His fingers caught on a heavy, metallic object.
With a sharp clink, a pair of industrial-grade wire cutters slipped from his grasp, tumbling down the marble steps. They rolled, catching the dim emergency light, before coming to a stop directly in front of my hand.
I stared at them. My heart stopped.
Caught between the heavy, sharpened steel blades of the cutters were tiny, frayed silver strands. Fraying that perfectly matched the high-tension steel cable currently dangling, severed and useless, from the ceiling dome forty feet above.
Julian froze. His eyes locked onto the wire cutters at my fingertips, then slowly moved to meet mine. The frantic, worried husband vanished. The panic in his eyes hardened into something dead, cold, and utterly psychopathic.
"Emily," he said, his voice dropping its frantic pitch, becoming disturbingly calm. "Give those to me."
"It was you," I whispered, the cold reality settling into my bones like ice water. The sudden 'malfunctions' in my car's brakes last month. The 'accidental' gas leak in the pool house. It wasn't bad luck. It was him. "You cut the cable. You knew I always stand under the dome at 3:00 PM to wait for the mail. You timed it."
"You were supposed to be under it," Julian muttered, stepping down the stairs toward me. He didn't look like the man I had married two years ago. He looked like a stranger wearing his skin. "You and that bastard child. Do you have any idea how much debt your father left behind? Do you know what happens to the Sterling trust if you don't survive to your twenty-eighth birthday next month? It all goes to me, Emily. All sixty million of it. Without the baby to inherit, it’s mine."
He reached into his inner pocket. This time, he didn't pull out a phone. He pulled out a sleek, bone-handled hunting knife.
"Julian, please!" I sobbed, trying to crawl backward, but my bruised hips refused to move. The weight of my pregnancy made me slow, heavy, and entirely defenseless.
He raised the knife, stepping over the last marble step, his eyes fixed on my throat. "An unfortunate accident. The chandelier fell, and a piece of jagged metal must have severed your carotid. It’s tragic, really. The police will understand."
He lunged.
But before the blade could descend, a streak of black and white intercepted him.
May you like
Sarah threw herself off the stairs, her small frame colliding with Julian’s shoulder. The sheer momentum sent them both crashing onto the glass-strewn floor. Julian snarled, kicking out, but Sarah clung to his arm with the ferocity of a wild animal, shielding me with her own body.
"Run, Mrs. Sterling!" Sarah screamed, her voice cracking as she blocked Julian's arm from striking. "Run!"
