Dominic POV
The bolt was barely cold in its housing before Sophie was on me. She came up the basement stairs two at a time, her little performance of the trembling victim already discarded like a soiled glove. Her eyes were bright, sharp, hungry. They were the eyes of a woman who had just watched a rival removed from the board by a single, decisive move.
"It's done," I said, brushing past her toward the study. My study. The one I had taken from Marcus Lin when I took everything else.
"Not quite." She followed me inside and closed the heavy door behind her. "The child, Dominic. The child is still inside her."
I poured myself a whiskey from the crystal decanter on the sideboard. The amber liquid caught the light as I swirled it. "The child won't survive this."
"You don't know that." She crossed the room and pressed herself against my back, her arms snaking around my waist. "She's strong. Too strong. What if the baby lives? What if she crawls out of that room with a living heir in her belly and a story to tell?"
I took a long drink. The whiskey burned, but it did nothing to quiet the small, persistent voice in the back of my mind that had been growing louder for weeks. Vivian had been asking questions. She had found the letters—the old correspondence with the Lin associates. She hadn't understood what she was reading, not yet, but she would. Given enough time, she would piece together the accident, the car, the signet ring. She would realize that her brother's death had been no accident at all.
Sophie's fingers traced a path down my chest. "You're worried," she murmured. "Don't be. I've already taken care of the phone. The little emergency burner she thought she had hidden so well—I found it days ago. Drained the battery to nothing. She'll try to call for help. She'll fail. And when the heat does its work, there will be nothing left but a tragic accident. The pregnant wife, the glass room, a malfunctioning ventilation system. It's perfect."
I turned to face her. "And the doctor? The one who will sign the death certificate?"
"Already paid." She smiled, that same counterfeit innocence she had worn when I first brought her into this house. "Half now, half when the job is done. He'll write whatever we tell him to write. Overheating. Complications. The baby was stillborn. The mother didn't survive the trauma. A tragedy."
I looked at her for a long moment. Sophie was useful. More useful than Vivian had ever been. Vivian had been a key—a way into the Lin family's vault. But Sophie was a weapon, and she was aimed exactly where I needed her.
"The heat," I said. "Turn it up. I don't want this to take all night."
She rose on her toes and pressed her lips to my ear. "When it's over," she whispered, "I'll give you everything she couldn't. A proper heir. A son who will never ask questions about where his inheritance came from."
I did not answer. I was thinking about the letters in Vivian's study, and about the burned-out car with Marcus's signet ring inside it, and about how many loose ends still remained. Sophie was right about one thing. Vivian had to go. But as I looked at the woman pressed against me—the woman who had just promised me an heir of her own—I wondered, briefly, whether I was trading one problem for another.
Then I dismissed the thought. Sophie was controllable. Vivian, with her questions and her inconvenient conscience, had become uncontrollable.
That was the difference. That was the only difference that mattered. I turned the thermostat another notch to the right. The vents roared louder. I did not know that three floors below, my wife was already bleeding. And I did not know that Marcus Lin was not dead. Not even close.
