Chapter 2 - The Key Beneath The Nursery Floor
Vivian looked between Brooke’s predatory eyes and Dominic’s silence. The fact that Dominic didn't immediately shove Brooke away was the final nail in the coffin of their eight-year marriage.
“Keep him, Brooke,” Vivian said softly, lifting her chin. “A man who can lie to his unborn child before noon isn’t a prize. He’s a liability.”
Before Dominic could lunge forward to stop her, Vivian flagged a yellow cab pulling away from the curb. She slid into the backseat, locked the door, and gave the driver an address she hadn't visited in three years: her late father’s modest brownstone in Lincoln Park. Through the rain-streaked rear window, she watched Dominic sprint toward his sleek black Maybach, his driver scrambling to open the door, but the midday traffic swallowed him whole.
When the cab pulled up to the ivy-covered brownstone, Vivian’s hands were shaking so hard she dropped her keys twice on the front porch. The house was freezing, smelling of old cedar and forgotten memories. Her father, Thomas Cole, had been Dominic’s father’s chief accountant for thirty years before dying of an apparent heart attack. Everyone believed Thomas died penniless after making poor investments, but Thomas had known who the Mercers truly were.
Vivian dropped the boutique bags onto the dusty sofa and walked straight to the nursery room she had prepared weeks ago on the second floor. She knelt on the floorboards, ignoring the sharp twinge in her lower back. Underneath the fourth floorboard beneath the window, right where her father had hidden his emergency stash decades ago, lay a steel lockbox.
Inside was a single brass key and an encrypted flash drive labeled with a single word: Mercer-Collateral.
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Vivian sat on the bare floor, tears finally spilling over her cheeks as she held the cold metal drive. For eight years, she had played the quiet, devoted wife, turning a blind eye to the late-night phone calls, the bodyguards lingering in their garden, and the bloodstains Dominic’s valet scrubbed out of his cuffs. She had believed Dominic was protecting her from the dark underbelly of Chicago.
Now she realized the bitter truth: he wasn't protecting her from the dark. He was keeping her in the dark so she would never see how expendable she truly was.
