Chapter 8 - The Ghost of Sarah
The face illuminated by the faint moonlight on the screen belonged to a woman with dark, sharp features, coal-black hair cut into a sleek bob, and cold, calculating eyes.
It was Eleanor Vance—Detective Robert Vance’s younger sister, and Julian’s executive assistant at the hedge fund for the past seven years.
Julian stared at the screen, his mind spiraling into a dizzying vortex of confusion and sudden, agonizing terror. The mouse trembled violently in his hand as he clicked through the file properties of the video archive.
Eleanor had been with his firm long before Vanessa ever entered the picture. She was the one who had managed his personal schedule, his household payroll, and his late wife’s medical appointments during Sarah’s battle with chronic fatigue syndrome. She was the one who had recommended Vanessa to him as a nanny for Lily after Sarah died—a grieving widow, Eleanor had claimed, who needed a fresh start.
Julian clicked on another file from the same night—an audio file captured by the ambient microphone hidden in the hallway smoke detector.
He pressed play.
A faint, whispering voice filled the quiet basement study, crackling through the high-end speakers.
"She's sleeping now," Eleanor’s voice whispered softly on the recording. "The dosage is double tonight. She won't wake up when she falls."
A second voice answered her—a dry, raspy chuckle that sent a wave of icy sickness through Julian’s stomach.
"Good," Vanessa’s voice replied from the darkness of the hallway. "Once Sarah is gone, Julian will be completely broken. He’ll sign whatever management agreement we put in front of him. Just make sure the girl stays quiet."
Julian slammed his hands down onto the mahogany desk, knocking his coffee mug to the floor, where it shattered into a dozen pieces against the rug.
It hadn't been an isolated act of stepmother cruelty. It was a long-term, calculated conspiracy—a predatory campaign designed by two women working in tandem to systematically destroy his family, murder his wife, isolate his daughter, and gain control of his two-hundred-million-dollar investment portfolio.
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Vanessa wasn't working alone. She was the hammer, but Eleanor Vance was the arm that swung it.
And Eleanor Vance was currently upstairs, sitting in the living room, having arrived an hour ago under the guise of delivering urgent legal documents regarding Vanessa’s bail hearing.
