Breaking The Rules

Chapter 18

Deborah's POV

I stood in the doorway, my fingers frozen against the edge of the wooden frame.

Seeing Sandra standing in the hallway, her posture completely collapsed and her eyes bloodshot with unshed tears, made a cold, heavy knot tighten in the pit of my stomach. Sandra never cries. No matter how brutal the pressure or how catastrophic the odds, she always holds her head high, wearing her quiet strength like an armor of steel.

Seeing her break down right in front of me told me one terrifying thing before she even opened her mouth: something truly unraveling had happened.

My mind instantly flashed back to the day we had our fight, the moment I had returned to my apartment to find a folded piece of paper jammed hard into the peephole of my door.

“Hypocrite,” the scrawled, printed note read. “You want to help save her, huh? Does she know you love Tony, her husband? Now watch your back, because I’m watching you. If you don’t want me to blow your cover, well . . . you know what to do.”

A visceral shudder ran through my spine at the memory. It was true, God help me. I liked Tony. He was charismatic, devoted, and everything a woman could ever dream of in a partner. I was no exception. But liking him from a safe distance was where it started and ended. I would never, in a million years, cross that line or betray my best friend. He was Sandra’s husband.

When I saw Sandra’s cryptic text messages last night, panic had seized me by the throat. She had stopped answering her phone entirely, leaving me stranded in the dark. Terrified that something had gone horribly wrong with their financial ruin, I called Tony directly just to ask if everything was still under control on his end.

Then came Sandra’s urgent instruction: “Tell Tony you connected me to someone who helped with the money. I’ll explain everything later.”

I would have lied to Tony without hesitation if he had called to ask me anything. I would have covered her tracks because that’s what best friends do. But now, looking at the raw, shattered expression on Sandra's face as she trembled in my hallway, the weight of every hidden secret felt like it was about to crush us both into dust.

"Sandra . . ." I whispered, my voice cracking as I stepped forward and pulled her inside, slamming the door shut against the world. "What happened to you?"

I had totally forgotten our fight at this instant; that wasn't important now.

For a long moment, she didn't speak. She just stood there in the center of my living room, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps. Her hands were shaking so violently she wrapped her arms around her waist as if trying to hold her shattered pieces together.

"Deb . . ." she choked out, her voice barely a breath. The dam finally broke, and a hot, silent tear spilled over her lashes. "I did it. The money . . . two million . . . it's in Tony's account."

"That's . . . that's amazing," I stammered, rushing over to grip her shoulders, though the dread in my stomach only deepened. "Sandra, why are you crying? This is good news. But what did you have to do?"

Sandra looked up at me, and the sheer, abject horror in her eyes froze the blood in my veins.

"I didn't just meet anyone, Deb," she whispered, her voice dropping into a hollow, haunted register. "I went to Crown Perth. And I gave him everything."

The room seemed to tilt sideways. My grip slipped from her shoulders. "You are making me confused and you are scaring me. Who . . . who did you give everything to, Sandra?"

"Harrison," she sobbed, the name tearing out of her like a confession at the gallows. "I traded myself to Harrison for the money."

Sandra’s knees buckled. I caught her just in time, half-dragging, half-carrying her toward the sofa. She collapsed against the cushions, burying her face in her hands as the full, ugly weight of her confession spilled out into the quiet apartment.

"Harrison . . ." I repeated, the name tasting like ash on my tongue. "You didn't. Sandra, tell me you didn't."

"I had no choice, Deb," she wept, her shoulders heaving with violent sobs. "Tony was going to lose everything. His company, his reputation, his life's work, it was all collapsing. Harrison knew it. He waited for me, cornered me with a price tag, and I . . . I paid for it."

She looked up at me, her eyes hollow, stripped of any remaining dignity. "I laid there in that hotel bed, Deb. I let him touch me. I let him take what belonged only to Tony, just so a digital wire transfer could clear. When I woke up this afternoon, I felt so dirty, so sick to my stomach, I couldn't even look at my own reflection."

The realization began to hit me. “How? What's Harrison's connection with your husband's company? I don't understand.”

Sandra quickly explained the financial trap Harrison had laid out. Listening to her, a cold, suffocating terror gripped my own chest. My best friend had traded her body, her soul, and her marriage vows to a predatory monster just to keep her husband afloat.

“Jesus Christ!!!” I screamed when she mentioned she'd just come straight from the hotel. ”Sandra, what have you done?”

She looked at me with pleading eyes. “Please stop screaming. I was confused, I wanted to save Tony. But it's okay, blame me. I know I messed up.”

And as I looked at her, crushed by her own self-loathing, the irony of our situation hit me like a physical blow. Here Sandra sat, drowning in the guilt of her ultimate sacrifice, completely unaware that I was harboring my own shameful secret, that I harbored feelings for the very man she had just put herself through hell to save.

Worse still, someone out there knew about my feelings. Someone was watching me, blackmailing me in the shadows.

If Sandra ever found out about my hidden heart, or if my blackmailer exposed my secret, it would shatter whatever fragile remnants of trust were left between us. We were two drowning women, locking our darkest secrets away in a room filled with ticking time bombs.

"Sandra, listen to me," I whispered, when I finally found my voice. Kneeling in front of the sofa and taking her ice-cold, trembling hands in mine. My own voice shook, thick with unshed tears. "You did what you thought you had to do to save your family. It's monstrous what he did, but you survived it. You hear me? You survived it."

"Tony thinks I got the money from a contact you introduced me to," she whispered, wiping frantically at her tears. "I had to lie to him. If he ever finds out . . . if he ever knows what Harrison did to me, our marriage is over. It will destroy him."

"He won't find out," I said fiercely, though my own heart was hammering against my ribs, terrified of the shadow hanging over my own door. "It stays between us. Forever. But why didn't you tell me when all this started? We could have sorted things out. We always do."

Before Sandra could answer, the sharp, shrill ring of her mobile phone shattered the heavy silence between us.

We both froze.

Sandra stared down at the screen resting on the coffee table. The caller ID flashed a single, dreaded name: Tony.

Sandra stared down at her husband's name, wiping her face frantically with the back of her sleeve, completely oblivious to the fact that the blackmailer's shadow wasn't just behind me, it was standing directly over both of us.

"Take it," I managed to whisper, trying to keep my voice steady despite the ice running through my veins. "Act normally. Answer him."

With a shuddering breath, Sandra reached out and picked up the phone.