My Twin And Faincé Betrayed me...So I Married His Rival

Chapter 32

*Andrea's POV*

The house was quiet in the mornings.

I liked it that way. Just me, my coffee, and the particular satisfaction of walking through a space like I owned it ... which, technically, I did not. But technicalities had never particularly interested me.

I moved down the upstairs hallway in my silk robe and my fluffy socks, my mug was warm between both palms, taking my time the way I always did when Liam wasn't home to make pointed comments about my schedule.

He had left for work an hour ago.

Which meant the house belonged to me and my coffee and my thoughts.

And apparently Elena.

I heard her voice before I reached her door ...muffled through the wood, bright and quick, the particular tone of someone wrapping up a phone call.

"Yes, I'll be down in ten minutes. Just give me a second to grab my things..."

I stopped walking.

And stared at her door.

I rolled my eyes so thoroughly I felt it in the back of my skull.

She was going out. Somewhere. With someone. Liam's wife, carrying Liam's alleged child, swanning around the city while I was standing in a hallway in my socks being ignored by a man who hadn't even sent a single text message.

I turned and continued toward the stairs.

My phone buzzed.

I looked at the screen.

It was my private investigator.

I stopped at the top of the staircase and answered immediately, already feeling better. "Tell me you have something."

"Everything you asked for." His voice was brisk and professional. "I have full background on both sisters. Family history, financials, connections. It's all in the file I just sent through."

"Both of them?"

"Elena Thompson, Eliza Thompson, and their family. Going back fifteen years."

A slow smile spread across my face. "You are very good at your job."

"I know. You'll find it interesting reading."

He hung up.

I lowered the phone and stared at it for a moment, already thinking about what I was going to find in that file, already three steps ahead in a plan that was coming together with a neatness I found deeply satisfying.

I just needed Alexander to call.

I looked at the screen again.

No messages. No missed calls. Nothing.

My smile faded quickly.

I had given him my card. I had stood in that hospital corridor and been charming and interesting and perfectly positioned and he had taken the card and looked at me with those sharp, calculating eyes and I had been certain — absolutely certain — that he would reach out within twenty four hours.

That had been yesterday.

Nothing.

The frustration moved through me fast and hot and before I had fully decided to do anything about it I had turned and hurled the coffee.

Not the cup. The coffee. The contents of the mug, in a wide dark arc, spattering across the step just below where I was standing — a satisfying mess that I immediately felt much better for having made.

I looked at it.

Looked at the mug still in my hand.

Somewhere downstairs, one of the maids would find it. That was what maids were for. I was not going to stand here and think about it.

I needed my laptop. I needed to open that file. And then I needed Alexander Steele to stop being stubborn and use the card I had given him like an intelligent person.

I turned and went back up the hall to my room.

My laptop was on the bed. I grabbed it, pulled up my email, opened the file my investigator had sent — and immediately the very first line made me sit down slowly on the edge of the mattress with my eyes wide.

*Interesting* was an understatement.

I was three pages in, completely absorbed, the rest of the world entirely irrelevant, when the sound hit me.

Not a bang. Not a crash.

A full blown scream.

High and sharp and sudden and wrong in the way that sounds are wrong when something has happened that cannot be undone — and it was coming from the stairs.

I was moving before I had finished processing it. I abandoned my Laptop, I was out the door and down the hall and at the top of the staircase in seconds.

And then I stopped.

Elena was at the bottom.

On the floor.

She had gone down hard — I could see it in the way she had landed, the awkward terrible stillness of someone who had not been able to catch themselves in time. Her bag had spilled across the bottom steps. Her phone had skidded across the floor.

And beneath her ....spreading slow and dark across the white marble was blood.

She had slipped from my coffee!!

My coffee, still sitting on the step where I had thrown it, glossy and dark and treacherous, and Elena's socks had found it and...

The world went very slow.

I was down the stairs before I knew I was moving, one of my hand on the railing, taking the steps too fast, not caring.

"Elena!"

My own voice sounded far away.

I hit the bottom step and dropped to my knees beside her and the word came out again, louder this time, cracked straight down the middle with something I had not expected to feel.

"Elena!"