Chapter 25: The Vault Access

The cracked screen pulsed with the message, a shard of blue light in the dim garage.

*Don't bring her to the cabin. It's not clean yet.*

Not *clean*.

My fingers hovered over the glass. I didn't know the sender. I didn't know what "clean" meant. But I knew exactly who "her" was.

Me.

Richard wasn't taking me on a romantic getaway. He was taking me to a crime scene. Or a holding cell.

I looked up at the house. Richard was still upstairs. Eleanor was likely in the library, drafting my termination papers. I was alone.

I shoved the broken phone into my purse, right next to the burner receipt and the stolen diary. I had enough evidence to start a war, but not enough to win it. I needed leverage. I needed something they couldn't spin, delete, or bury in a trust fund.

I needed the attic.

I had been interrupted last night. Richard had nearly caught me. But now, the house was distracted. Richard was packing for our "trip." Eleanor was occupied with the fallout from the Gala.

It was now or never.

I slipped out of the car, leaving the door unlocked. I ran back into the house through the service entrance, my sneakers silent on the linoleum. The kitchen was empty, the staff busy clearing the remnants of the party from the lawn.

I took the back stairs two at a time, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs. *Thump. Thump. Thump.*

The attic door at the top of the landing was still unlocked. Richard hadn't secured it. He must have been too rattled, too focused on damage control.

I pushed it open. The smell of turpentine and old dust washed over me, heavy and suffocating.

I stepped inside, closing the door softly behind me. I didn't turn on the light. The morning sun filtered through the grime-streaked skylight, illuminating the studio in a hazy, dreamlike glow.

I went straight to the corner where I had found the diary. The box was still there, overturned, papers scattered across the floor.

But I wasn't looking for papers this time. I was looking for the paintings.

I moved to the stack of canvases leaning against the far wall. Catherine's work. The violent swirls of red and black that I had dismissed as madness.

I pulled the first one forward. It was the desert landscape. The house in Nevada.

I pulled the second. A portrait of Eleanor, her face twisted into a mask of cruelty, her hands gripping a small, swaddled bundle.

I pulled the third.

And I stopped breathing.

It was a portrait of Richard. But not the Richard I knew. Not the polished CEO in the Italian suit.

This Richard was younger. Wilder. He was standing on a balcony, the iron railing intricate and familiar. Behind him, the skyline of a city. Paris.

But it wasn't the setting that made my stomach drop.

It was what he was holding.

In his hand, casually, like a toy, was a blue velvet box.

The same box he had given me last night. The same box that held the diamond tennis bracelet.

But in the painting, the box was open. And inside wasn't a bracelet.

It was a ring. An engagement ring.

A vintage sapphire with a halo of diamonds.

I looked down at my own left hand. At the ring I had worn for ten years. The ring Richard told me was a family heirloom, reset for me.

It was the same ring.

He hadn't bought it for me. He hadn't reset it.

He had bought it for her. For Catherine. In Paris. In 2002.

I moved the painting aside, my hands shaking uncontrollably. Behind it was another canvas. And another.

They were all of him. Richard sleeping. Richard laughing. Richard holding a baby.

They weren't the paintings of a sister. They were the paintings of a wife documenting a life that was being erased.

And in the corner of the room, draped in a dusty sheet, was a large easel. I hadn't noticed it last night.

I walked over to it. I gripped the edge of the sheet.

I pulled.

The fabric slid to the floor with a soft *whoosh.*

I stared at the canvas.

It wasn't finished. The paint was still tacky in places.

It was a portrait of me.

But my face... my face was crossed out. Red slashes of paint marred my eyes, my mouth, my throat. Violent, angry strokes that looked less like art and more like an execution order.

And written in the corner, in bold, wet crimson letters:

*THE BENEFICIARY.*