Chapter 3

I played the part of the broken woman.

I let Julian hold my hand. I let him feed me soup. I cried when he told me how much he loved me.

Inside, I was a machine. Observing. Calculating.

He thought he had me. Docile, grieving, medicated.

He was wrong.

I remembered his past actions, replaying them in my head with this new, terrible clarity.

The way he always took Scarlett's calls, no matter what we were doing. The "business trips" that coincided with her political rallies. The way he dismissed my investigative work as a "hobby" while praising Scarlett's activism as "vital."

It was never about love. It was a long, patient game of revenge. And I was the board.

I needed an out. I needed an ally.

There was only one person I could trust. Ben Carter.

My old journalism professor from Columbia. A Pulitzer Prize-winning editor who saw the fire in me before the Caldwell name polished it away. He was retired, living a quiet life in Vermont, but he never cut ties.

I waited until Julian left for a "press conference" to express his public grief.

I found a burner phone I'd kept from an old investigation, hidden in a book. My fingers were clumsy, but my mind was sharp.

It rang three times.

"Carter." His voice was gravelly, just as I remembered.

"Ben," I whispered. "It's Elara."

There was a pause. "Elara. I saw the news. I'm so sorry about the baby."

"The baby was the least of it, Ben."

The words spilled out. The poker game. The dossier. The sedatives. The phone call I overheard in the hospital.

I told him everything. My voice was flat, devoid of emotion. I was a journalist reporting a story. The story of my own destruction.

He listened without interrupting. When I finished, the silence on the line was heavy.

"Where are you now?" he asked, his voice now hard as steel.

"I'm at home. He thinks I'm sedated. He's got the doctor making house calls."

"Stay put. Don't let on that you know anything. Play the victim. Can you do that?"

"I'm learning," I said.

"Good. I'm going to make some calls. I'll get you out of there. But Elara, you need to be ready. This is bigger than Julian. This is about the Caldwells. All of them."

"I know," I said, a cold resolve settling in my gut. "They started this. I'm going to finish it."

"Atta girl," he said. "Hang tight. I'm coming."

Hanging up, I felt a flicker of something I thought was gone forever.

Hope.