Chapter 4 - The Fragmented Alliance
"Ryan!" I screamed into the dark crawlspace, my voice cracking with dust and panic. "Ryan, where are you?!"
No answer. Only the distant sound of wind howling through the broken kitchen window below.
I crawled frantically through the dark rafters, my hands splintering against the rough wood. The smoke from the kitchen was beginning to seep up through the floorboards, making it impossible to breathe. I reached the main access panel that led to the upstairs hallway linen closet. I pushed it open and dropped down, tumbling onto a pile of towels.
The second floor was dark, but down the hall, in the master bedroom, I heard a faint muffled cry.
I ran toward the sound, my paralyzed muscles screaming in protest. I burst through the door to find Olivia holding Ryan by his jacket collar. She had a small silver revolver pressed against his temple. Her flawless hair was ruined by the rain, and her eyes were wide with a desperate, manic energy.
"Stay back, Mia!" Olivia shrieked, her voice shaking as she adjusted her grip on the weapon. "I mean it! If you take one more step, I’ll end this right now. We worked too hard for this money. I am not going to jail because of you and your pathetic brat."
"Olivia, please," I begged, dropping to my knees, raising my hands in surrender. The amber vial was still tucked securely into my waistband, but right now, it meant nothing. "Take the money. Take the firm. Just let him go. He’s sick. He needs an ambulance."
"It's too late for an ambulance," Ethan’s voice spoke from the doorway behind me. He walked into the room, his face covered in soot from the smoke canister, his eyes completely bloodshot. He looked at Olivia, then at Ryan, and for a split second, a look of profound disgust crossed his face—not at what he was doing, but at Olivia’s lack of control.
"You shouldn't have touched the kid, Olivia," Ethan said coldly, stepping into the room. "That wasn't the plan for this stage. If the police find a bullet wound in a child, the accident narrative is completely dead. We can't spin this."
"The narrative is already dead, Ethan!" Olivia yelled back, her arm trembling as Ryan whimpered beneath the cold steel of the gun. "Your kitchen is on fire, someone just threw a smoke bomb through your window, and the feds are probably at the gate by now! We need a hostage to get to the airfield!"
A hostage. They had a plane waiting.
"Who threw the canister, Ethan?" I asked, trying to keep their attention on me, trying to give Ryan a chance to slip away. "Who sent the text messages? Someone knows what you did."
Ethan froze, his eyes narrowing as he stared at me. "What text messages?"
Before I could answer, my phone in my pocket rang out loudly, the ringtone echoing through the tense room. Olivia jumped, her finger tightening dangerously on the trigger.
"Put it on speaker," Ethan commanded, pointing the tire iron at my face. "Now."
I pulled out the phone with shaking fingers and pressed the screen.
"Ethan," a calm, deeply resonant voice came through the speaker. It was a voice I recognized immediately—Julian Vance, Olivia’s older brother and the senior managing partner of their law firm. "I told you to handle this cleanly. I told you that if you left a single loose end, I would erase you myself. You’ve turned a simple corporate restructuring into a circus."
Olivia gasped, her face losing all its remaining color. "Julian? You... you're the one who told her?!"
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"Of course I did, little sister," Julian’s voice replied through the phone, cold and entirely businesslike. "Ethan was getting sloppy. He was sentimental. He kept the records in his house instead of our secure server. I couldn't risk the firm's reputation on a man who allows his wife to crawl into his ceiling. The police have already breached the front gate, Ethan. Goodbye."
The line went dead.
