Chapter 7

Cynthia reached the end of the long corridor and pushed open the cheap wooden door to her bedroom.

She stopped dead in her tracks.

The room was completely trashed. The doors of her small closet were ripped open, her few items of clothing thrown carelessly across the floor. The drawers of her desk had been pulled out and dumped.

Standing by the bed was Brenda, Inger's personal maid. In Brenda's hands was a delicate, intricately carved antique wooden statue.

It was the only thing Cynthia had left of her dead mother, Lillian.

Cynthia's blood ran cold. The temperature in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Her eyes locked onto the statue, her pupils dilating into dark, dangerous pools.

The sound of heels clicking against the floorboards announced Inger's arrival. Her aunt strolled into the room, a look of triumphant malice plastered across her face.

"Looking for this?" Inger asked, gesturing to the statue in Brenda's hands.

Inger walked up to Cynthia, her chin raised in arrogance. "You will go to the Church family tomorrow and call off this ridiculous engagement. You will tell them you are unfit. And then, you will marry the Astor boy."

Cynthia didn't move. Her breathing was slow, measured.

"If you don't," Inger sneered, stepping closer, "I will take a hammer to that piece of junk. You'll never see your mother's precious heirloom again."

Inger expected tears. She expected Cynthia to fall to her knees and beg.

Instead, Cynthia took a slow, deliberate step forward. The sheer intensity of her icy stare made Inger instinctively take a half-step back.

"You are stealing the property of a dead woman to blackmail me," Cynthia said, her voice eerily calm. "Aren't you afraid of karma, Inger?"

Inger threw her head back and laughed, a harsh, grating sound. "Karma? I am the lady of this house! Everything in it belongs to me! I can smash that statue to dust, and no one will say a word to stop me. You are nothing but a parasite I want gone!"

Cynthia stopped walking. The rigid line of her mouth suddenly curved upward into a chilling, blood-curdling smile.

A violent rush of blood immediately surged to her head, her breath catching painfully in her throat at the sight of the desecration. The anger threatened to blind her. But the moment she caught the triumphant, gloating smile stretching across Inger's cruel face, a freezing wave of absolute clarity washed over her, chilling her to the bone. She forced her expression into a mask of complete apathy. Without making a single sound, she slipped her hand deep into the pocket of her jeans, her thumb blindly finding the side button to hit record.

A voice echoed loudly from the phone's speaker.

"If you don't, I will take a hammer to that piece of junk..."

"Everything in it belongs to me! I can smash that statue to dust..."

Inger's arrogant laugh died in her throat. The color drained from her face so fast she looked like a corpse. She stared at the black rectangle in Cynthia's hand with absolute horror.

"Give me that!" Inger shrieked, lunging forward like a wild animal, her manicured claws reaching for the phone.

Cynthia easily sidestepped the clumsy attack. She grabbed Inger's wrist, twisted it sharply, and shoved her backward. Inger tripped over her own heels and crashed hard onto the mattress.

Cynthia stood over her, casting a dark shadow. "Three minutes of audio," Cynthia said, her voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "Extortion. Grand larceny. Blackmail. I wonder how the NYPD will handle this. Or better yet, the New York Post. 'Long Island Socialite Blackmails Orphan Niece.' Your reputation in the country club would be dead by noon."

Inger trembled violently on the bed. Her chest heaved, her eyes wide with genuine terror. The threat of public humiliation was a knife to her throat.

Cynthia slowly turned her head and locked eyes with Brenda, who was shaking like a leaf.

"Put it down," Cynthia commanded.

Brenda nearly dropped the statue in her haste to place it gently on the nightstand.

"Get out," Cynthia hissed.

Inger scrambled off the bed, her dignity entirely shattered. She shot Cynthia a look of pure, venomous hatred, but she didn't dare say a word. She fled the room, Brenda hot on her heels.

Cynthia walked over and locked the door. She went to the nightstand and picked up the wooden statue with both hands. Her thumb gently brushed away a speck of dust from the carved wood. For a fraction of a second, her eyes softened with grief, but she quickly blinked it away.

She tapped her phone screen, uploading the audio file to an encrypted cloud server. The war in this house had just escalated, and she needed all the ammunition she could get.