Chapter 9 - The Ghost in the Rain
Reid moved before I could even stand.
With terrifying speed, he stepped between me and the glass doors, reaching into the underside of the console table near the wall and pulling out a sleek, compact semi-automatic pistol.
Arthur didn't even flinch. He picked up his phone, his thumb already dialing security. “Donald. Lower terrace. Move now.”
Through the sheer curtains covering the terrace doors, a figure was visible in the faint moonlight.
It was Blythe.
She wasn't wearing shoes. Her bare feet were caked in black lake mud, the bottom half of her designer wedding gown torn to shreds and soaked with water from wading through the marsh grass along the shoreline trail. Her hair hung in wet, tangled ropes around her shoulders, and her hands were pressed flat against the glass, leaving smeared, bloody prints where her broken fingernails had scraped against the limestone rocks.
She wasn't shouting. She wasn't throwing herself against the door.
She was just standing there, looking through the glass with wide, unblinking eyes, tapping her engagement ring—a massive, six-carat emerald-cut diamond that Reid had given her—against the pane.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
“Stay behind me, Willa,” Reid commanded, his voice deadly quiet as he kept the firearm lowered at his side, his finger indexed along the frame.
“Wait,” I said, stepping out from behind him.
My heart was pounding against my ribs like a trapped bird, but the fear that had defined my relationship with my sister for thirty years was completely gone. In its place was a strange, hollow sadness.
This was the girl who had had forty relatives laughing at my expense while I held my college diploma. This was the girl who had been handed everything—every dollar, every compliment, every advantage my parents could beg, borrow, or steal.
And now she looked like a drowned wraith standing on the edge of nothing.
“Willa, don't,” Reid warned, his hand reaching out to catch my wrist.
“She’s unarmed, Reid,” I said softly. “Look at her hands.”
I walked to the terrace doors, reached down, and turned the heavy brass deadbolt.
I slid the glass door open four inches. The cold, wet wind from the lake rushed into the warm room, carrying the smell of damp earth and rotting pine needles.
Blythe didn't try to push the door open. She stopped tapping. She looked down at me through the gap, her teeth chattering so violently that the sound was audible over the wind.
“Willa...” she croaked. Her voice was shredded, completely stripped of that melodious, charming cadence she had used to captivate country clubs and boardrooms. “Willa, please.”
“Go home, Blythe,” I said. “The police are already on their way.”
“I don't have a home!” Blythe shrieked suddenly, her hands gripping the edge of the sliding door, her face contorting into an agonizing grimace. “They locked the house! The bank put yellow tape across Daddy’s office door! Mom is in a holding cell with—with drug addicts, Willa! They took her jewelry! They took her shoes!”
Tears were streaming down her face, cutting clean paths through the mud and dried mascara.
“You have to sign the paper,” Blythe pleaded, her voice dropping into a desperate, frantic whisper. “Just tell Arthur you made a mistake! Tell him we worked on the research together! You can have half the money! You can have two million dollars, Willa! You’ve never had two million dollars in your entire life! You can buy whatever you want! You can fix your face! You can get surgery, you can get clothes, you can be pretty!”
Even now.
Even standing in the mud with her life in ashes around her feet, Blythe Vance could not comprehend a universe where physical appearance wasn't the ultimate currency. In her broken, poisoned mind, my entire existence was still defined by the fact that I hadn't been born beautiful.
Behind me, Reid let out a low, dangerous growl, stepping forward to wrench the door shut.
“Wait, Reid,” I said, holding up a hand.
I looked at my sister. Really looked at her.
“I don't need surgery, Blythe,” I said, each word landing with the weight of an iron anchor. “And I don't need your two million dollars. I built a life that belongs entirely to me. Every dollar I have, I earned. Every friend I have, loves me for who I am. Every patient I treat, trusts me with their life.”
I reached up, touching my grandmother’s pearl earring.
“You spent thirty years looking in mirrors, Blythe. And you never once realized that there was nothing behind the glass.”
Blythe’s face went completely still. The frantic desperation drained away, replaced by an expression of pure, incandescent hatred.
“I hate you,” she whispered, her voice venomous. “I have always hated you. From the day you were born, you made me sick. You were so pathetic, so quiet, always reading your stupid books while everyone told me how gorgeous I was. You were supposed to be nothing! You were supposed to die in that lab alone!”
“And yet,” I said softly, “here I am.”
Two heavy flashlight beams swept across the terrace from the lawn.
“Step away from the door!” Donald’s voice bellowed through the rain. “Hands where we can see them! Now!”
Three armed security officers moved in with terrifying speed, flanking Blythe before she could run. One of them gently but firmly pulled her hands away from the glass door, while another wrapped a heavy canvas security blanket around her soaked shoulders.
Blythe didn't fight them. As Donald secured her wrists with zip-ties, she looked back at me through the glass one last time.
She didn't look like a golden child anymore. She looked small, hollow, and completely broken.
May you like
I reached down and slid the heavy glass door shut, turning the deadbolt with a firm, final *click*.
***