Allison pushed the heavy oak door open with her shoulder.
The grand foyer was blindingly bright. Crystal chandeliers cast sharp light over the imported Italian marble floors.
Sharon Lindsay sat on a velvet sofa in the center of the room, sipping Earl Grey tea from a bone china cup.
By the floor-to-ceiling windows, Kason stood holding his phone, video-chatting with Haylee. His voice was a soft, comforting murmur.
Allison stepped inside. She tightened her grip on the reinforced, waterproof travel case containing the urns. She wouldn't have stepped foot back in this circus if her legal ID and emergency passport weren't still locked in the study safe. She needed her true identity back to disappear. The muddy water from her shoes left dark, dirty prints on the pristine white rug.
Sharon's eyes snapped to the floor. Her face twisted in immediate disgust.
Kason heard the footsteps. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Allison. He didn't even bother ending the video call. Instead, he angled the screen so Haylee could see, a cruel smirk playing on his lips. "Hold on, baby," he murmured to the phone. "The trash just walked in. Let me deal with this."
He marched toward her, his jaw tight. "So you finally crawled back? I thought you’d still be wandering that highway begging for a ride."
Allison ignored him. She tightened her grip on the reinforced travel case pressed against her chest. She only needed her passport from the safe; then, this place would be a memory.
Sharon slammed her teacup onto the saucer. The porcelain clattered sharply.
"What are you holding?" Sharon demanded, her sharp eyes fixing on the case. "What is that?"
"My parents' ashes," Allison said. Her voice was raspy, but the words cut through the room like glass.
Sharon gasped. She shot up from the sofa as if she had been burned.
"Are you insane?" Sharon shrieked, pointing a trembling finger at Allison. "You brought dead people into my house? You are ruining the feng shui of this entire estate with your low-class filth!"
Sharon turned to the head butler standing near the stairs. "Get those disgusting things out of here. Throw them in the dumpster!"
The butler stepped forward, reaching his hands out to grab the case from Allison's arms.
Allison's eyes went dead.
The shift was instantaneous. The submissive wife vanished. The Delta Force operator surfaced.
She didn't move her body. She simply locked eyes with the butler. The sheer, predatory violence in her stare hit the man like a physical wall.
The butler froze, his hands trembling in mid-air. A cold sweat broke out on his neck. He took a step back.
Kason saw the hesitation. He thought Allison was just throwing a tantrum.
"Stop acting like a psycho!" Kason yelled. He lunged forward, reaching out to grab her shoulder and force her down.
Allison dropped her left shoulder a fraction of an inch. She pivoted on her heel with lethal speed.
Kason's hand grasped empty air. His momentum carried him forward, and he stumbled awkwardly, barely catching himself on the edge of a console table.
Humiliation flared hot in Kason's chest. He spun around, twisting his Patek watch violently.
"Take your broken box and get the hell out of my house!" Kason roared.
Broken box.
The words struck the air.
Allison looked at the man she had secretly saved from bankruptcy three times. The man she had loved.
Her chest didn't hurt anymore. There was only a profound, echoing emptiness.
"As you wish," Allison said. Four words. Flat. Cold.
She pulled the rental car keys from her pocket and tossed them onto the marble console table with a metallic clatter. "The car is in the driveway. I'm done with your 'charity'." The keys slid across the wood, a final severance of her ties to the Lindsay name.
She turned her back on him and walked toward the door. Her spine was perfectly straight.
"You won't last three days out there!" Kason shouted at her back. "You have nothing without the Lindsay name!"
Allison placed her hand on the brass doorknob. She let out a soft, chilling laugh, and walked out into the cold air.
She stood on the edge of the private road and pulled out her burner phone.
Since she had ditched the Lindsay-funded rental, she opened a ride-share app and typed in an address.
Not a homeless shelter. Not a cheap motel.
She typed in the address of a thirty-million-dollar penthouse on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. It was a property purchased years ago through a heavily layered blind trust, funded entirely by her classified hazard pay and operational bonuses. Untraceable to the Lindsay name, it was a ghost asset for a ghost operator.
Sitting in the back of the Uber, Allison watched the city lights bleed across the window. She rubbed the scar on her collarbone.
She was going to burn Kason Lindsay's world to the ground.
