The police had taken Victoria away in handcuffs, her ice-blue eyes still blazing with a mixture of rage and madness as she screamed accusations that nobody believed anymore. The paramedics had checked us all for injuries, finding nothing more serious than a few cuts from the shattered glass. Marcus had given his statement with the calm efficiency of someone who had dealt with corporate crises before.
But through it all, I couldn't stop thinking about that message spelled out in lights across the street. By the time I had convinced one of the officers to look, the lights had been turned off, leaving nothing but ordinary office windows staring back at us like blank eyes.
"You imagined it," Harris said when I mentioned it for the third time. "The stress, the fear, the gunshot-your mind was playing tricks on you."
We were alone now in his penthouse, the broken window boarded up with plywood that made the elegant space feel like a crime scene. Marcus had gone to deal with the police paperwork and Victoria's arrest, leaving Harris and me to face the wreckage of the evening.
"I didn't imagine it," I said, wrapping my arms around myself. The temperature had dropped with the broken window, and I couldn't seem to get warm. "Someone wanted me to know about the basement."
Harris moved to the bar cart and poured himself a glass of something amber and expensive. His hands were steady, but I noticed he drank it in one swallow.
"There is no basement in this building," he said without looking at me. "It's built on Manhattan bedrock. Underground construction wasn't feasible."
"Then why did you look so panicked when I mentioned it?"
He set down his glass with more force than necessary. "Because a woman had just tried to kill you in my home, Flora. Because Victoria's madness nearly got you hurt. Because..." He ran a hand through his dark hair, messing up the perfect style for the first time since I had met him. "Because I realized how close I came to losing you."
The words hung between us, heavy with meaning I wasn't ready to examine. This was supposed to be a business arrangement. A contract marriage with no emotions involved. But the way he was looking at me now, with something raw and vulnerable in his steel-gray eyes, made my heart race in ways that had nothing to do with fear.
"Harris," I began, but he cut me off.
"Sign the contract, Flora." He walked to his desk and picked up the thick document we had abandoned when the lights went out. "Victoria is gone. The threat is over. Your mother needs surgery in less than two weeks, and I can make that happen with one phone call."
"What if I don't want to sign it anymore?"
The question surprised both of us. I hadn't planned to say it, but Victoria's accusations and the anonymous warnings had planted seeds of doubt that were growing stronger by the minute.
"Then your mother dies," he said simply. "Your brother doesn't go to college. Your family loses everything. Is that what you want?"
"That's not fair."
"Life isn't fair, Flora. But this contract is the best offer you're going to get."
I stared at the papers in his hands, thinking about my mother's pale face in the hospital bed, about Tommy's dreams of MIT, about the foreclosure notice that gave us nineteen days to save our home.
"I want to see the basement," I said suddenly.
Harris went very still. "I told you, there is no-"
"Then prove it." I walked toward him, my fear transforming into determination. "If there's nothing to hide, show me. Take me downstairs and prove that whoever sent that message was lying."
"Flora, you're being ridiculous-"
"Am I? Because a few hours ago, you stood in this room while Victoria accused you of making women disappear, and you didn't deny it until she played that recording. You let me think you were a monster rather than simply tell me the truth."
"I was protecting-"
"Yourself. You were protecting yourself." I held out my hand. "Give me the key."
"What key?"
"The key you've been playing with in your pocket since the police left."
Harris looked down at his hand, and I saw his surprise when he realized he had indeed been fidgeting with something in his pocket. He pulled it out slowly-a small, silver key that looked old and well-worn.
"This isn't-" He stopped himself, staring at the key as if he had never seen it before.
"Isn't what?"
"I don't remember putting this in my pocket." His voice was quiet, confused. "I don't know where this came from."
A chill that had nothing to do with the broken window ran down my spine. "Harris, that's not possible. Keys don't just appear-"
The lights went out again.
This time, the darkness was complete. Even the emergency lighting failed to kick in, leaving us standing in Harris's penthouse with nothing but the distant glow of the city filtering through the remaining windows.
"Stay where you are," Harris said, his voice sharp with authority. "Don't move."
But I was already moving, drawn by a sound I couldn't quite identify. It was coming from beneath us, a rhythmic tapping like someone knocking on wood.
Or like someone knocking on a ceiling from below.
"Harris, do you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
The tapping grew louder, more insistent, and now I could swear I heard something else-a voice, muffled and desperate, calling from somewhere underneath the penthouse floor.
"Help me," the voice said, so faint I might have imagined it. "Please, someone help me."
I dropped to my knees and pressed my ear to the marble floor. The voice was clearer now, definitely female, and filled with a terror that made my blood run cold.
"Harris, there's someone down there. Someone's trapped down there."
"That's impossible." But his voice had changed, and when I looked up, I could see his face in the dim city light. He looked like a man who was seeing ghosts.
The tapping stopped abruptly, leaving only silence. Then, so quietly I almost missed it, the voice spoke again:
"Flora? Is that Flora up there? Please, Flora, you have to help me. He's been keeping me here for so long. I tried to leave, tried to break the contract, but he wouldn't let me go. Please-"
The voice cut off with a sound that might have been a door slamming.
I stood up slowly, my legs shaking so badly I could barely support my weight. In the dim light, I could see Harris standing frozen by his desk, the mysterious key still clutched in his hand.
"Who is that?" I whispered. "Who is down there?"
Harris opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out. He looked like a man who had just realized that everything he thought he knew about his own life was a lie.
The lights came back on with a sudden brightness that made us both wince. But in that first moment of illumination, before our eyes adjusted, I saw something that made my heart stop.
There was a woman standing by the elevator.
Not Victoria-this woman was tall and brunette, wearing a simple white dress that looked like it hadn't been changed in weeks. Her dark hair was tangled, her face gaunt, and her brown eyes were filled with a desperate hope that broke my heart.
"Rebecca?" Harris whispered, the key falling from his nerveless fingers to clatter on the marble floor.
The woman who was supposed to be happily running a bakery in Portland smiled at him with sad, defeated eyes.
"Hello, Harris," she said quietly. "Did you miss me?"
That's when I realized that everything Harris had told me about his previous wives was a lie.
And one of them had been imprisoned in his building this entire time.
