Chapter 229
CATHERINE
The air in Kiera’s bedroom was cold. She sat hunched over a sleek, matte-black console, her fingers dancing across a touchscreen. A heavy-duty microphone stood between us, and as she spoke, her voice was filtered through a processor that stripped away every feminine lilt, replacing it with the rough, metallic rasp of an anonymous middle-aged man.
“I know what you did to Madeleine,” Kiera said into the mic.
The silence on the other end of the line was absolute, a void that seemed to suck the warmth out of the room. We were huddled around the speaker, Dante standing guard by the door while I sat on the edge of the bed, my hands knotted in my lap. This was the “distraction”—the reason Richard had bolted from the lounge, leaving Julian with a clear path to the study.
“Who the hell are you?” Richard’s voice finally boomed through the speaker. It was sharp, authoritative, and lacked even a flicker of hesitation. “How did you get my private line p>
“Wrong questions,” the cold, male voice boomed again when Kiera spoke.
“You are crazy. How dare you call my private line and make such stupid allegations p>
I watched the audio waves jump on Kiera’s monitor. Allegations. He didn’t ask who Madeleine was. He didn’t ask what “deeds” the caller was referring to. He went straight to the defensive, labeling the threat before the threat had even been defined. The lack of confusion in his voice was a confession in itself. If he were innocent, he’d be asking for clarification. Instead, he was already building a wall.
Kiera leaned closer to the mic, a wicked smirk touching her lips. She let out a harsh, distorted laugh that sounded like gravel grinding together.
“You can deny it all you want, Richard Vaughn,” she rasped through the voice changer. “But there’s proof. Paper trails don’t just vanish because you stop looking at them. There is enough evidence sitting in a secure location right now to send you to jail for the rest of your life. Kidnapping, fraud, medical malpractice… it’s a long list for a man running for Mayor p>
There was another pause. I could almost picture Richard’s face, his knuckles white on the phone, his eyes scanning everywhere as his mind raced through a thousand contingencies.
When he spoke again, his voice had shifted. The bluster was gone, replaced by a terrifying, low-frequency calm. He wasn’t scared; he was negotiating.
“I see,” Richard said. “I know how this works. My fellow campaigners are getting desperate, aren’t they? They’ve hired some gutter-rat to call me with a fabricated story, hoping I’ll flinch. Well, I don’t flinch p>
“It’s not a story,” Kiera countered. “And you know that well p>
“Listen to me,” Richard interrupted, his tone becoming transactional. “Whatever you think you have, whatever lie they’ve paid you to tell… it’s worthless. But I’m a busy man, and I don’t like distractions. I am willing to pay you off. Name your price to destroy these ’documents’ and walk away. Double whatever the opposition is giving you. Triple it. I don’t care about the money; I care about my time p>
I felt a chill run down my spine. He was so smooth, so practiced at bribery that it felt like he was ordering a drink at a bar. He wasn’t admitting to a crime, but he was willing to pay a fortune to keep the name Madeleine out of the headlines. He was smart—too smart. He never used the words ’guilty’ or ’truth.’ He kept it entirely focused on ’fabricated stories’ and ’hiring gutter-rats p>
Kiera glanced at me, her eyes flashing with frustration. She was trying to gaslight him, to push him into a corner where his ego would force him to admit something; maybe a detail, a location, a justification. But Richard was a black hole; he absorbed everything and gave back nothing but shadows.
“I don’t want your money,” Kiera’s distorted voice growled. “I want to see you crawl. I want to see the look on your sons’ faces when they find out their mother didn’t leave them—that you disposed of her like she was yesterday’s trash p>
The line went quiet again, but this time, the silence felt different. It felt heavy with a sudden, lethal intent.
“You’ve made a very big mistake,” Richard said. The calm was gone, replaced by a snarl that made me shiver. “You think you’re clever, hiding behind a scrambled line? You think you can threaten my family and my career and just walk away? I have resources you can’t even imagine. If I find out who you are—and I will find you—I am going to make you pay for accusing me wrongly. I will make sure you regret the day you ever learned my name p>
“Is that a threat, Richard?” Kiera asked, her voice steady.
“It’s a promise,” he spat. “Watch your back. Because if you so much as breathe the name Madeleine in public again, you won’t live long enough to see the election results p>
Click.
The dial tone filled the room, sounding like a flatline. Kiera pulled her headset off, her face pale. She turned to the monitor, her fingers flying across the keys as she tracked the call.
“He’s furious,” I whispered, my heart hammering. “He didn’t break. He just got more dangerous p>
“He didn’t have to break,” Kiera said, her voice shaking slightly as she checked the GPS data on the screen. “The fact that he threatened to kill a stranger over a name is all the confirmation I need. But we have a problem p>
She pointed to a blinking red dot on the map.
“Julian is still in his study,” she said, her eyes widening. “Richard will head there now to be certain that he still has all his evil secrets intact. Julian has to get out of there without being seen, unless Richard will start to piece it all together p>
My blood turned to ice. “No. No. We can’t have him suspect any of us p>
Kiera grabbed her phone, her thumb hovering over the dial. “Inform him. Now! If Richard catches him at that safe, he will find out the remaining truth. Richard is in a killing mood, Catherine. Tell Julian he needs to be out of that room now p>
I scrambled for my own phone, my hands shaking so hard I nearly dropped it. I hit Julian’s name, praying to whatever god was listening that he wasn’t so focused on finding evidence against Richard, that he forgot to take his phone with him.