Chapter 2
1017 Words
Stacy hadn't moved.
Her hand still trembled. Her eyes were locked on the glow of her screen.
Her phone buzzed again.
Another unknown number.
*Your father’s debt was never about money. What he saw that night eight years ago… Richard Blackwood cannot afford him to remember.*
Her vision blurred.
Her heart began to race.
She read it twice. Slowly. Fear and disbelief twisting together in her chest.
Another message came in immediately.
*The marriage… it was never meant to happen. It was a distraction. Don’t let Gerard Blackwood know you know.*
She had never even met Gerard.
And she was already being warned about him.
This wasn't just about a wedding.
This was about secrets.
Dangerous ones.
Stacy gripped the phone until her knuckles turned white.
What could she do?
Who could she trust?
Her mind replayed everything.
The letter. The threats. The name Blackwood.
Thirty days.
That was all she had.
Thirty days to save her father.
Thirty days to decide if she would marry a man she had never met.
Her phone vibrated again.
*Phase two begins at midnight. Be ready.*
Her stomach tightened.
Phase two.
She didn't know what that meant but she knew it would be worse.
Much worse.
Slowly, Stacy stood up from the bed.
She walked out of her room and towards her father's door.
She pushed it open carefully.
Victor was awake.
Sitting on the edge of his bed in the dark. Staring at nothing.
He looked like a man carrying something heavy for too long.
She wanted to ask.
What did you see eight years ago?
What did Richard Blackwood do?
But words refused to come out.
She remembered what the mystery sender said.
“Dont trust anyone!”
Not even him.
Her chest tightened painfully.
She closed the door quietly and returned to her room.
She didn't know what phase two was.
But she had a terrible feeling she was about to find out.
Stacy closed her bedroom door softly behind her.
The apartment was still dark. Still quiet. Heavy with everything she had just learned.
She walked back to her bed and sat down slowly.
The letter was still in her hand.
Her phone was on the mattress beside her.
She stared at both of them for a long time. Then she looked up at the ceiling and let the silence settle over the room.
Her mind replayed everything.
The envelope.
The threats.
The messages.
Her father’s face flashed in her mind.
The way he worked every day even when he was exhausted. The way he never complained. The way he always made sure she ate before he did. The way he had carried the weight of this debt alone for years without ever letting her feel like a burden.
He had sacrificed everything for her.
And now his life depended on her.
Her thoughts shifted suddenly to the rich man in the car.
The rain.
The puddle.
His cold eyes.
The way he told her to move like she was nothing.
A thought crossed her mind.
What if the rich son she was so supposed to marry was anything like that man?
Arrogant. Heartless. Untouchable.
Then she thought about her father's secret.
The one he had been hiding for eight years.
Which meant this was bigger than a wedding.
Bigger than money.
Bigger than fear.
Stacy straightened her back. Her hands still. Though her heart still raced in her chest.
Not because she wasn’t afraid anymore…
…but because she had made a decision.
She wouldn't sit there without action.
She wouldn't hide.
She was Victor Mills’ daughter.
And tomorrow…
She was going to Blackwood Enterprises.
She was going to face them herself.
On her own terms.
After a long and stressful day, Stacy finally falls asleep.
Morning came too fast.
She woke, got dressed, and stepped softly toward her father's room. He was still asleep. She didn't wake him.
Outside, she grabbed a cab and headed toward Blackwood Enterprises.
Her hands were sweating before she even reached the glass towers. Her heart pounded like a drum in her chest.
Glass towers. Security guards. Expensive cars.
I don't belong here.
She thought immediately.
She pushed through the lobby doors. Everyone moved with purpose, dressed in sharp black suites, busy and precised.
Then she looked down at herself… worn secondhand clothes sticking out like a sore thumb.
The security receptionist noticed her immediately.
“Do you have an appointment?” she asked
“No!” Stacy said. Forcing her voice steady. “But tell Richard Blackwood Victor Mills’ daughter is here.”
The receptionist hesitated, then picked up the phone.
Stacy straightened her back and hid her trembling hands in her pocket.
I will not let them see I'm afraid.
She said to herself
She observed the lobby. Security cameras, rushing employees, hushed whispers. Everything screamed power she had never known.
Then she realized. Her world was completely different from the one she stepped into. And somewhere inside, she wondered: what did the man who had threatened her father really look like?.
The elevator doors opened from somewhere across the lobby.
A man stepped out. Expensive suit. Cold face. Eyes that didn’t just look… they pierced.
The man from the car.
He stopped when he saw her. Recognition didn't come at once, but something about her made him pause.
He walked toward her slowly, each step measured, deliberate, like a man who owned every room he entered. Because he did.
He stopped in front of her.
“Victor Mills’ daughter,” he said. Not a question. A statement.
Stacy's mouth opened and closed.
The man who had looked through her like she was nothing under the rain… was the same person standing in front of her.
“You!” she breathed.
He looked at her. Simple. Precise. “Me.”
Ding!
The elevator doors closed behind him.
Her hands trembled, and every instinct screamed to run.
But she couldn’t move. She couldn’t look away.
This was him. Gerard Blackwood.
And from the way he looked at her now, she knew one thing: nothing would ever be the same.
- Writer
