Chapter 1: The Wrong Woman
1238 Words
The cameras were already there.
That was the first thing Lena saw. Not the shouting. Not the way that people were suddenly running instead of walking. The cameras. Big ones. Flashing. Locked in her direction as if she’d done something to justify recording.
She stopped short.
Someone jostled her shoulder and swore. Someone else had called her name, except it wasn’t her name. It sounded as though it were close, yet she turned anyway.
“Mrs. Blackwood!”
Lena’s stomach dropped.
She took a step back. Then another. Her heel caught on something and she’d have gone down if not for a hand wrapping around her arm.
Hard. Steady.
“Don’t,” a man muttered beside her.
She looked up.
He was taller than she’d thought. Dark coat. Sharp lines. A face that seemed as if it had learned how not to react to anything. His hold wasn’t painful, but it wasn’t gentle either. It felt practiced.
“You’re mistaken, I believe,” Lena said promptly. Even to her own ears, her voice came out odd. Too thin. “I’m not—”
The man leaned closer. Not so much that the cameras would catch anything. Enough for her to smell soap and something metallic beneath it.
“If you try to get away,” he said, “this gets worse.”
“What gets worse?” she whispered.
Everything.
He didn’t say it. He didn’t have to.
Right in front of her face there now appeared a microphone. Another flash went off. Someone called his name.
“Mr. Blackwood!”
That’s when she understood.
Not fully. Just enough.
This wasn’t about her.
The man tensed his grip and looked toward the cameras. He walked like the space was his, like sound buckled around his shoulders.
“This is not the place,” he said quietly. “It has been a difficult period for my wife.”
The word hit her like a slap.
Wife.
Lena’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
There was a murmur in the audience. Phones lifted higher. There was a whisper and then an audible gasp from one end of the room to another.
The man’s hand moved from her arm to her back. Warm. Firm. Claiming.
“We’re going to issue a statement later on,” he added. “Please respect her privacy.”
He did not look at her when he said it.
She was being moved now. Guided. Dragged through the crowd, popping flashes around them. She attempted again to speak, tried to tell them she wasn’t who they apparently believed her to be, but the words all came out as a choked sound without meaning.
She scampered along with her feet hardly brushing the ground.
A black car's doors swung open. She was ushered in before she could even protest. The door slammed shut. The sound out there shut off suddenly.
Silence rushed in.
Her chest heaved. She placed both hands on her thighs to steady them. The leather seat was cold.
The man got in beside her. Closed the door. The car started moving.
Only then did he look at her.
“You’re safe,” he said.
“I’m not your wife,” Lena said.
“I know.”
The answer came too fast.
Her heart thudded. “Then why did you say that?”
“Because it was that or let them tear you apart,” he answered. “And because you were also standing where she ought to have been.”
She stared at him. “Who?”
“My wife,” he said again. “Evelyn.”
The name weighed heavily on them.
“She’s dead,” he added.
Lena swallowed. “Then this is insane.”
“Yes.”
He said it like a fact. Not an apology.
The car turned sharply. Lena held onto the side of the seat.
“You should let me out,” she said. “I don’t want anything to do with any of this.
“You already have,” he said. “If you march back out there right now, they’re going to follow you home. To your job. To anyone who knows you.”
Her throat tightened.
“You look enough like her that they ain’t going to let it go,” he added. “And they’re ready to decide who you are.”
Lena laughed weakly. “So you decided for them?”
He didn’t respond right away. He looked carefully out on the road through the tinted window.
"I need you to keep still," he said at last. “Just for tonight.”
“For how long after that?”
He looked at her then. Really looked. His eyes were sharp. Searching. As if he were assessing something invisible.
“That depends,” he said.
On what?
She didn’t ask. She already didn’t like the answer that was coming to her chest.
The car slowed. Tall gates opened. Slammed shut with a dull metallic sound.
The mansion rose up in front of us, all glass and stone and lights that were a touch too bright than anyone would feel at home in. It didn’t look like a home. It seemed designed to hold things in.
Inside, staff waited. Too many of them. Watching her with careful expressions.
“Bring her upstairs,” the man said. “Second floor. East wing.”
Someone reached for her coat. She flinched back.
“It’s fine,” the man said. “Leave it.”
She climbed the stairs after him, each step borrowed. The corridor smelled of polish and something floral that she couldn’t identify.
A door opened. A bedroom. Huge. Impersonal. White sheets. Dark furniture. An unrumpled bed.
“This isn’t mine,” she said.
“No,” he agreed.
The door closed behind them.
Lena turned on him. “You need to be honest with them.”
“I can’t,” he said.
“Why?”
“Because my wife’s death was not an accident.”
The words landed hard.
“And because,” he said, more quietly now, “you were at the marina the night she died.”
Lena froze.
Her pulse roared in her ears. “What?”
“I have questions,” he said. “You are going to help me answer them.”
She shook her head while backing away till the bed pressed into her knees. “I didn’t kill anyone.”
“I didn’t say you did.”
“You think I did.”
He didn’t deny it.
That stung worse than an accusation.
“You can stay here tonight,” he said. “Security will be outside the door.
“And if I try to leave?”
“I’ll stop you.”
Her chest ached at the honesty in his voice.
He turned to go.
“What’s your name?” she asked suddenly.
He paused at the door.
“Ethan Blackwood,” he said.
Then, without looking back, he added, “And you’d best not forget anything from that night as well for your own good, Lena Morrow.”
The door closed.
The lock slid into place.
Lena stood there, trembling, surrounded by a life that wasn’t hers, accused without words, prisoner to the man who had just named her his wife to the world.
And deep inside herself, fear gave way to something even colder.
Since she did know one thing for certain.
Someone else had killed Evelyn Blackwood.
- Writer
