Chapter 5 - The Reflection in the Glass
I scrambled backward, dropping the ledger onto the rug, and whipped my head around.
Julian stood framed in the open doorway of the study. He wasn't wearing his pajamas; he was fully dressed in a dark turtleneck and trousers, his arms crossed over his chest. His face was devoid of sleep, washed in an eerie, calm composure that was infinitely more terrifying than his morning rage.
“Curiosity,” Julian said softly, his voice cutting through the quiet room like a scalpel, “has a rather fatal habit of shortening a person’s lifespan, my dear.”
I pushed myself up against the heavy mahogany desk, my hands searching blindly behind me for anything I could use as leverage. “You framed Clara. You set up that entire accident just to collect an insurance write-off... or worse.”
“Clara is a non-entity,” Julian replied, taking a slow, measured step into the room, his eyes gleaming with a cold, predatory intelligence. “Just like you’re beginning to prove to be. Did you really think I wouldn't notice the key missing from behind grandfather’s portrait? I left it there as bait. And you, true to form, walked right into the trap.”
My heart hammered so hard I thought it would burst. “Leo saw you,” I whispered, stalling for time, calculating the distance to the hallway door. “Leo saw you sabotage the roof supports. He told me everything.”
Julian’s expression hardened, a dark shadow crossing his features. “Then it’s a tragedy that children have such poor memories, isn't it? Accidents happen in large estates all the time, darling. A loose balcony railing, a sudden fall down the grand staircase... it’s amazing how fragile human life can be.”
He took another step closer, lifting his right hand from his pocket. Light glinted off something small and heavy he held between his fingers.
May you like
And then, catching the faint reflection in the glass of the French balcony doors behind him, I saw it—sparkling fiercely on his pinky finger, completely out of place on a man’s hand, was a heavy, custom-designed diamond ring with an intricate platinum setting.
My stomach plummeted into an abyss. It wasn't Julian's ring. It belonged to his sister, Evelyn, who had mysteriously vanished during a yacht trip three years ago, leaving her entire multi-million-dollar estate directly to Julian.
