THE BILLIONAIRE'S DEAD WIFE

CHAPTER 2: BLACKWOOD MANOR

The car that came at 6am was not the same one from the graveyard. It was longer, blacker, with a driver who did not speak.

He took my one suitcase like it weighed nothing. Inside was two dresses, my mother's old bible, and the contract I had signed in mud. My mother did not come to the gate. She had locked herself in the bedroom since I told her I was leaving for a year to work as a private nurse for a wealthy family in Grayport. It was the lie Damian's assistant had scripted for me.

"Where is Grayport?" my mother had asked.

"By the ocean. They pay $90,000," I said. She didn't ask again.

We drove for four hours. The highway turned into coastal road, the coastal road turned into private road, the private road turned into trees that had been planted to hide something. Then the trees opened.

Blackwood Manor was not a house. It was a statement.

Forty rooms of glass and black stone built on a peninsula that stuck into the Atlantic like a knife. The ocean on three sides. The wind was so strong it pushed the car. The driver said, "We get a lot of storms here, Miss Vale. The house was built to survive them."

Built to survive them. Not to be loved.

The front doors were twelve feet tall, made of black walnut. They opened before we touched them.

Mrs. Finch was waiting. Sixty, silver hair in a tight bun, eyes that had seen every wife, every mistress, every lie that had lived in this house. She wore a black dress and no smile.

"You must be Elara," she said, but not like a question. Like an accusation.

I felt my stomach drop. "Zara," I corrected quietly. "Zara Vale."

"For Mrs. Croft, you are Elara. For everyone else in this house, you are Mrs. Croft. Come."

She didn't take my suitcase. She walked, expecting me to follow. Inside, the floor was white marble that reflected the ceiling. Everything was cold. Art that cost more than my life, but no photos. No family photos anywhere. Only one painting above the fireplace — the woman in red. My face. But older, sadder, painted like she knew she would die.

"Elara's portrait was painted two weeks before the accident," Mrs. Finch said, following my stare. "Mr. Croft hasn't allowed us to remove it."

Accident. So that was the official story.

"Where is Mrs. Croft? The mother?" I asked.

"On the terrace. She sits there every morning waiting for Elara to come back from Europe. Today, Elara came back."

Her tone told me I was a cruelty.

The terrace was glass, overlooking the ocean. A small woman in a wheelchair, wrapped in a cashmere blanket, despite it being summer. Oxygen tank beside her. Hair thin and white. When she turned, her eyes were milky on the left side — blind, like the contract said.

Then she saw me.

"Elara?" Her voice was a whisper that broke.

Then louder. "Elara! My Elara is back!"

She tried to stand from the wheelchair and couldn't. I ran without thinking, knelt in front of her, took her hands. They were bones covered in paper skin, but warm.

She touched my face. Her fingers traced my scar above my eyebrow, the exact scar Elara had in the photo.

"My beautiful girl. You cut your hair. You were gone so long. Damian said you were in Switzerland for treatment. Did it hurt, baby?"

I had prepared for this. Damian's assistant had given me a sheet: Elara had leukemia, treatment in Geneva, lost hair, now in remission. That was the lie for his mother.

"It didn't hurt anymore, Mama," I whispered, using the word the sheet told me to use. "I'm back."

Evelyn Croft started crying — silent, shaking crying — and pulled my head to her chest. She smelled like lavender and medicine. "I told Damian to bring you home. I told him I can't die without seeing my daughter again."

I held her. For the first time since my father's funeral, I felt someone needed me to be alive.

Behind us, a voice said, "Mother, you will catch cold."

Damian.

He stood in the doorway of the terrace, in a black sweater and dark jeans. Without a suit, he looked younger, more dangerous. He had been watching us.

"Damian, look, Elara came!" Evelyn cried, holding me tighter. "Our Elara is home."

Damian's eyes met mine over his mother's head. He did not smile. He gave a small nod, as if I had passed a test.

"Yes, Mother. Elara is home. Now Mrs. Finch will take you inside for your medicine. I need to speak with my wife."

The word "wife" hung in the cold air.

Mrs. Finch wheeled Evelyn away, Evelyn waving at me the whole time, calling "Come have tea with me later, Elara!"

Then we were alone on the terrace with the ocean crashing below.

Damian walked to the glass railing. "You were good with her. Better than I expected."

"I didn't know you coached me to lie to a dying woman," I said. My voice was shaking. "That's low, even for a billionaire."

He turned. "My mother has Stage 4 pancreatic cancer. Two months left. She loved Elara like a daughter. She asks for her every day. Would you tell her the truth? That her daughter-in-law died screaming in a car crash on Route 7, that her body was burned beyond recognition? Would that be kinder?"

I had no answer.

He stepped closer. He smelled like rain and expensive soap. "Let me show you your room."

He led me up a floating staircase. Second floor, east wing. The hallway was all doors, all closed. He stopped at the last one, opened it.

It was a bedroom bigger than our whole house in Kisumu. But it was not empty.

It was a woman's room, untouched. Dresses still in open closet — all blue, white, cream. No red, as per rule. Makeup on vanity. A book open face-down on the bed — "The Art of Forgery." And on the nightstand, a small bottle of prenatal vitamins.

"Elara's room," I whispered.

"Your room now," he said. "For the contract year, you sleep here. I sleep in south wing. We meet for meals with my mother. Two charity events per month, as agreed. My staff will call you Mrs. Croft. Do not correct them."

He placed my single suitcase on the bed. It looked obscene in this luxury.

"One more thing." He went to the window and pulled the curtains. From here I could see the north wing, separated by a glass bridge. Third floor, one door, black, with a new padlock.

"Rule one, Zara. That door stays locked. Do not cross the bridge. Do not ask about it."

"What's in there?" I asked.

He looked at me, and for a second his mask slipped. He looked exhausted.

"Everything she left behind that I can't burn."

He left. The door clicked softly.

I stood alone in my dead twin's bedroom, $90,000 contract in my suitcase, ocean roaring below, and I heard it.

From across the glass bridge, from the locked third floor that was supposed to be empty.

A piano. Playing. One note, then another. Slow. Deliberate.

Someone was in Elara's locked studio.

And they were playing the lullaby my mother used to sing to me when I was a child.