The next morning, the door to Carlota's hospital room swung open.
Chesnee walked in, flanked by two massive male orderlies in dark scrubs.
"Pack her things," Chesnee ordered, her voice brisk. "I've signed the discharge papers. She's going to recover at home."
Carlota lay limp against the pillows. She kept her eyes half-closed, playing the part of the broken, defeated woman. She offered absolutely no resistance as the orderlies roughly lifted her from the bed and placed her into a wheelchair.
They rolled her out of the hospital and shoved her into the back of a black, tinted luxury van.
The van drove out of Manhattan, heading north. Two hours later, they pulled through the rusted iron gates of an abandoned estate in Upstate New York. It was a property the Hall family had lost to foreclosure years ago, now sitting in decay.
Chesnee snatched Carlota's smartphone from her purse. "You will rest here," Chesnee sneered, locking the heavy wooden door of the moldy second-floor bedroom from the outside.
Carlota stood in the center of the dusty room. She walked to the dirt-caked window and looked down. Two burly security guards were stationed at the front entrance. She was a prisoner.
Night fell. The old house creaked in the wind.
Suddenly, the lock on her bedroom door clicked. The door opened an inch.
Hector Trujillo, the elderly former butler of the Hall family, slipped into the room. He carried a silver tray with a bowl of lukewarm soup. His face was deeply lined with age and sorrow.
Carlota's eyes burned with tears. Hector was the man she had called last night.
Hector set the tray down and quickly pulled a rusted brass key from his pocket, pressing it into Carlota's hand.
"Hector, how did you get a job working for her?" Carlota asked, her voice trembling with confusion.
"I've been suspicious of Chesnee ever since your mother passed away," Hector whispered, his weathered face hardening. "I guessed she might eventually use this abandoned property to hide her dirty work, so I bribed the local caretakers months ago to let me take over the night shifts. I've been waiting for an opportunity like this." He pointed to the key.
"This opens the cellar door in the back," Hector whispered, his voice shaking. "The guards change shifts at exactly 3:00 PM every day. You have a five-minute window."
Carlota gripped the cold metal key. "Hector, what is Chesnee doing? Where does she go?"
Hector looked around nervously. "Every fifteenth of the month, she takes Harper and drives to the west mountains. She leaves all the guards here. I don't know what is up there."
Carlota looked at the calendar on her cracked backup phone. Tomorrow was the fifteenth.
"I'm going to follow them," Carlota said, her voice hard.
The next afternoon, the sky turned a bruised purple. Heavy rain clouds rolled over the mountains.
At 2:55 PM, Chesnee's black Mercedes pulled up to the front of the estate. Harper got in the passenger seat. The car sped off down the gravel driveway.
At exactly 3:00 PM, Carlota unlocked her bedroom door. She crept down the back stairs, her heart pounding in her throat. She slipped through the cellar door just as the guards walked around the front of the house.
She ran to the dilapidated stables. Hidden under a tarp was an old, beat-up dirt bike Hector had prepared.
Carlota threw her leg over the seat and pulled a black helmet over her head. She kicked the starter. The engine roared to life, the sound masked by the thunder rumbling overhead.
She tore out of the stables, taking a hidden dirt path through the dense woods that ran parallel to the main road.
Through the trees, she kept her eyes on the taillights of the black Mercedes.
The road began to wind steeply up the side of the west mountain. The paved road ended, turning into slick, treacherous mud. The rain started to fall, a cold, biting drizzle that soaked through Carlota's thin jacket.
The Mercedes finally stopped in front of a pair of towering, rusted iron gates.
Carlota killed the engine of the dirt bike. She pushed it deep into a patch of thick evergreen bushes. She pulled off her helmet and crept forward on foot, her boots sinking into the mud.
She peeked through the iron bars. A faded bronze plaque on the stone pillar read: Oakwood Private Cemetery.
Chesnee and Harper stepped out of the car. They held black umbrellas and carried a bouquet of white chrysanthemums. They walked through the gates.
Carlota took a deep breath. She moved to the side of the stone wall where the iron fence had rusted and broken away. She squeezed her body through the gap, the sharp metal scraping her arm.
She followed their muddy footprints through the sprawling, silent graveyard.
Up ahead, Chesnee and Harper stopped in front of a massive, polished black marble headstone.
Carlota ducked behind the thick trunk of a giant oak tree. She peeked around the bark, holding her breath.
Chesnee knelt in the wet mud. She placed the white flowers at the base of the stone. She was crying, her shoulders shaking.
Carlota narrowed her eyes against the rain. She had to see whose grave commanded such devotion from a woman who had no heart.
