Chapter 1 - The Cold Truth of Wealth
The helicopter sat on the pad, its rotors still twitching like the wings of a dying insect. Grant Harrington stared at the device security had pulled from the internal wiring—a compact, terrifying mess of plastic explosives and remote triggers. The silence that followed was heavy, broken only by the distant morning birds and the ragged, uneven breathing of Caleb Miller.
Caleb stood three feet away, his chest heaving, blood dripping from his knuckles onto the pristine concrete. He looked like a man who had been dragged through a thresher—tattered work clothes, a gash across his forehead, and eyes that held the hard, unblinking focus of a predator.
Grant turned his gaze toward his wife. Vanessa Harrington was still standing near the edge of the helipad, her silk robe fluttering in the rotor wash. Her face, usually a mask of composed, aristocratic beauty, had collapsed. She wasn’t looking at the bomb; she was looking at Caleb with a loathing so pure it could have burned through steel.
“Vanessa,” Grant said, his voice dangerously low. “Tell me how you knew the driver, Miller, had no accomplice. You just told security he acted alone. But the police haven’t even finished their initial inspection of the device.”
Vanessa’s lips parted, but no sound came out. She had been trapped by her own calculated lie.
May you like
“I… I heard the security guards whispering,” she stammered, stepping back. “Grant, you can’t be serious. You’re listening to a farmhand? A man who lives in a shed?”
Caleb didn’t wait for Grant’s permission. He stepped forward, ignoring the way the bodyguards’ hands hovered near their sidearms. “I saw him, Mrs. Harrington. I saw the driver talking to you by the rose garden at midnight. You handed him the bag with the wires.”
