Dead.
The line had been cut or the charger pulled. It didn’t matter which.
She reached instead for the encrypted phone beneath the lamp and typed fast.
To Ruth: Someone downstairs. Call 911. Stay upstairs.
Then she heard it.
His voice.
“Vivien.”
She froze.
It sounded ruined. Hoarse. Drunk. Angry enough to shake.
Below her, the beeping of the keypad on the secret room began.
Once.
Wrong code.
Again.
Wrong code.
A pause.
Then a heavy thud.
Another.
The sound of a shoulder against reinforced wood.
The third hit splintered something. The fourth opened it.
Vivien slid off the bed carefully, one hand on the mattress to steady herself. Her heart was banging so hard she thought the baby might feel it as weather. She moved backward until the edge of the headboard touched her spine.
Down the hall, a door opened.
“911 is on the line,” Ruth shouted.
No answer from below.
Then footsteps on the stairs.
Slow at first, then faster.
Preston appeared in the bedroom doorway with hair damp from sweat, shirt half untucked, face hollowed by fury and bourbon. He looked like a man whose collapse had outrun his vanity. In one hand he held a folder torn from the evidence wall downstairs. Papers trailed behind him like feathers.
“You watched me,” he said.
Vivien kept her voice even. “You need to leave.”
“For five years.” He stepped into the room. “Monitors. ledgers. files. Like I was some lab rat.”
“You’re violating bail. Police are coming.”
“You made me this way.”
It was almost impressive, the speed with which men like Preston can build themselves a sanctuary out of blame even while standing in the rubble they created.
“I was a good man,” he said, voice rising. “You dangled all of it in front of me. The money, the status, the deals. Then you punished me for taking it.”
Vivien felt fear, yes. But underneath it something colder had finally replaced shame.
“You were cruel before you knew my net worth,” she said. “Money didn’t make you dishonest. It just made the consequences bigger.”
He moved closer.
“I’ll take everything from you,” he hissed. “I’ll take the baby if I have to. You think you’ve won because of one stupid show? I’ll make your life—”
A new voice cut through the room from the hall.
“Boy, the only thing you’re taking tonight is a concussion if you step one inch closer.”
Preston turned.