Chapter 4 — The Seed of Doubt
677 Words
Dominic Voss had never been a man easily fooled.
He built his billion-dollar empire on instinct, control, and razor-sharp attention to detail. He could read a market collapse weeks before it hit. He could tell when someone was bluffing from the way they blinked. Lies were currency in his world—and he was rarely on the losing end.
But now?
Now he sat in his study, in the silence of a mansion that once echoed with pretend laughter and staged smiles, playing the voicemail again. And again. And again.
“Dominic—please! Something’s wrong—there’s smoke—oh God, the engine—”
It was too… perfect.
The pauses.
The panic.
The rising pitch.
He had watched Juliette act her way through three years of public appearances. He knew every tick in her voice, every tear she could summon on cue. And this recording? It was her greatest performance.
Only he wasn’t applauding.
He was unraveling.
By the third day, the media frenzy had cooled. With no body and no wreckage found, the FAA labeled it a “presumed fatal crash.” Insurance agents called. His lawyer called. But Dominic took none of the calls—except one.
Levi Kross, his personal security advisor.
“She planned this,” Levi said over the line, voice low. “We’ve started digging.”
Dominic didn’t speak.
He didn’t need to.
Levi continued, “The jet’s transponder was disabled mid-flight. Not in a crash. Mid-flight. Whoever was on that plane didn’t want it tracked.”
“And Juliette?” Dominic asked.
“No customs record of her landing anywhere. But—” Levi hesitated, “—we found a bank trail. She transferred $16 million into a numbered offshore account… yesterday.”
Dominic stood slowly, blood pounding in his ears. “Impossible. She’s dead.”
“Not according to her wire transfer. And it came from your settlement account. The one we finalized before she boarded the plane.”
He was silent for a long time.
Then: “She played me.”
“Yes.”
Dominic’s grip tightened around the phone until his knuckles turned white.
“She faked the crash. Took the money. Disappeared.”
“Yes.”
“And I let her walk away. I—drove—her—to the goddamn plane.”
“Yes.”
Dominic’s eyes were like steel now.
“Find her.”
Elsewhere…
Juliette Ward—now going by the name Marina Doyle—sat in the back of a dusty taxi as it rolled through a sleepy Appalachian town in West Virginia. Her dark hair was tied into a loose bun, a baseball cap pulled low over her eyes.
She was tired, but her chest ached with something she hadn’t felt in years.
Freedom.
This town was small enough for her to vanish. She had a plan. A fake ID, a new name, and a job offer from the local library where no one asked questions. The accident had been staged, the plane records altered, and a doctored voice message left to manipulate Dominic.
She didn’t enjoy tricking him.
But she had no choice.
If he knew the real reason she fled…
If he knew what—or who—she had been running from…
She doubted even a man like Dominic Voss could save her.
Back in Houston...
Dominic sat at his desk, staring at the framed photo of their wedding day. Her smile was radiant. His expression, cold. Like he had always known it wasn’t real.
But something in her eyes…
He had spent three years ignoring it.
Three years pretending he didn’t notice the quiet pain behind her smiles. The way she looked at him when she thought he wasn’t watching. The way she never asked for anything—until she asked for everything.
One kiss.
One goodbye.
And now? One lie too many.
He had given her his name.
She’d taken his money.
Now he wanted something back.
Not the fortune.
Not even the truth.
He wanted her.
End of Chapter 4.
- Writer
