Chapter 2
579 Words
I rolled down the window and lit a cigarette.
At 6 p.m., Thierry's Maybach rolled out through the villa gates.
The two bodyguards who usually kept watch outside his study trailed behind.
I hadn't figured it out until I was dragged onto that yacht in my last life. Thierry had taken both of them along to celebrate Celeste's achievement, something he'd never done before.
That was the only night the study was left empty.
It was also my only chance to take my mom home.
I watched his taillights vanish around the corner and stubbed out the cigarette.
I pushed the door open, got out, and headed to the backyard.
I muttered, "Thierry, while Celeste waits to die in that hellhole tonight, you can celebrate to your heart's content at the banquet table."
I'd already cut the surveillance wires in the backyard.
My mom used to sell security systems. From the age of 14, I followed her into equipment rooms, pulling cables and reading blueprints.
Cutting the wires on a run of old cameras was no harder than cracking open a bottle of water.
I climbed over the low iron fence. The servants on the first floor were all busy in the front hall.
I climbed the exterior drainpipe, feeling my way up to the second-floor terrace.
It led directly to Thierry's semi-open study.
The floor-to-ceiling glass door was unlocked. I pushed it open and slipped inside.
The cigar smoke in the study was suffocating.
I went straight to the back of the bookcase.
I lifted the painting of a tiger descending the mountain, revealing the safe embedded in the wall.
Thierry was arrogant to his core.
He was dead sure the urn of my mom's ashes was enough to keep me under his thumb for life.
I never would have imagined, even in my dying moments, that the safe's combination wasn't his own birthday.
In my last life, before they dragged me onto the yacht, Celeste leaned in to gloat in my ear.
"The password is my birthday. Daddy loves me most."
The moment seawater flooded my lungs, that sequence of numbers burned more clearly than my own name.
I typed Celeste's birthday into the keypad.
The cabinet door popped open.
Inside were a few gold bars, a stack of property deeds, and a rosewood container at the very bottom.
Next to it lay a palm-sized black ledger.
I opened the first page.
Strings of offshore bank codes and densely packed transfer figures. The largest transaction was nine figures.
I knew this was the ledger recording Thierry's money laundering for Remy Wolfe.
I didn't take the ledger, though.
If it went missing, Thierry would immediately be on alert, and it would also throw off Jules's timing for tonight's sting operation.
I held up my phone and snapped photos page by page, saving them to an encrypted draft set to auto-send.
When I was done, I pressed the ledger back into place.
I carefully lifted out the rosewood container.
A layer of dust had settled on the lid.
I wiped it clean with my sleeve, little by little.
I unfastened the latch. Inside, a white porcelain urn rested quietly.
There was a hairline c***k on the urn.
That c***k was from three years ago, when Thierry sent people to snatch the ashes from the funeral home.
He wouldn't even let my mother keep her last shred of dignity.
'Mom, it's been three years. Finally, I can take you home.'
- Writer
