Carmen lay on the floor for exactly ten minutes. The blood continued to seep between her fingers, pooling on the cold marble.
The housekeeper, Mrs. Vance, finally took a tentative step forward, her face pale. "Ma'am... do you need-"
"Don't touch me." Carmen's voice was flat, devoid of emotion. She rolled onto her side, ignoring the wave of nausea that hit her. She planted her hands on the floor and pushed herself up. Her knees shook, but she locked them.
She walked past the staff, leaving a trail of bloody footprints on the hardwood. She walked down the hall to her small study-the room she had claimed as her own because the master bedroom never felt like hers.
She shut the door and locked it. She turned the deadbolt, then shoved a heavy chair under the handle.
She walked to the small bathroom attached to the study. She looked in the mirror. The gash on her forehead was deep, right at the hairline. The skin was split wide open, revealing the yellowish fat layer underneath. It needed at least six stitches.
She opened the medicine cabinet. Behind the bottles of aspirin and melatonin sat a disguised medical kit. She pulled it out. It was a top-grade surgical kit, the kind not available to civilians.
She cleaned the wound with iodine. The sting made her jaw clench, but she didn't make a sound. She threaded a curved needle with absorbable suture. She looked in the mirror, her hands perfectly steady. She pierced the skin, driving the needle through the dermis, and pulled it taut. One stitch. Two stitches. Six stitches. She tied off the last one and cut the thread with surgical scissors.
She smeared medical glue over the closure and pressed the edges together. She stuck a sterile bandage over it.
She stared at her reflection. The woman in the mirror looked like a ghost. Pale, bloody, exhausted. But her eyes were clear. The weakness was gone. The hope was gone.
She walked back into the study. She went to the bookshelf and pulled out a worn copy of War and Peace. The pages had been hollowed out. Inside sat a thin, matte-black laptop. Military-grade encryption. Custom-built.
She opened it and pressed the power button. A logo flickered on the screen: four stylized flames arranged in a square. The signature of "Four Fires," the most wanted hacker in the world.
Her fingers flew across the keys. She bypassed the Morrison estate's multi-million dollar security system in under thirty seconds. She accessed the local server and pulled up the hallway camera feeds.
The files from the last hour were missing. Deleted.
Carmen let out a short, humorless laugh. Amateurs.
She initiated a deep-scan recovery protocol. A custom algorithm she had written herself began to piece together the fragmented data. A progress bar appeared on the screen. 10%... 25%...
While the recovery ran, her fingers danced across the keyboard, slipping past firewalls into Kian's private server. His emails, his travel logs to a clinic in Switzerland, his calendar alerts for a 'F.W. Return'-it was all there in plain text. Information was power, and she was about to be all-powerful.
Her phone buzzed on the desk. The screen lit up with a text from Marcus Holloway, Kian's assistant.
Mr. Morrison requests that you remain in the guest quarters tonight. Do not disturb Ms. Astor-Vance.
Carmen picked up the phone. She didn't reply. She threw it into the trash can.
The laptop chimed. Recovery complete.
She clicked on the video file. The footage from the master bedroom hallway played. The timestamp showed fifteen minutes before she arrived.
Seraphina walked down the hall, a smug smile on her face. She was carrying a plastic bag. She entered the bedroom.
The camera inside the bedroom was disabled, but the hallway audio picked up the sound of tearing plastic and liquid splashing.
Five minutes later, a figure appeared at the end of the hall. Kian. He stood perfectly still, his hands in his pockets, watching the bedroom door. He wasn't surprised. He wasn't rushing to help.
He pulled out his phone. Typed a message. A second later, Seraphina's muffled phone chimed inside the room.
Kian turned and walked back toward the stairs.
Carmen stopped the video. She opened a secondary log. She traced the text message Kian had sent.
Doing great. Make it look real.
The words stared back at her from the screen.
He wasn't just blinded by prejudice. He wasn't just making a mistake. He was the director of this little play. He had stood there and watched Seraphina set her up. He had encouraged it.
Carmen stared at the screen until the pixels blurred. She didn't cry. The tears had dried up years ago. There was only a vast, echoing emptiness where her heart used to be.
She highlighted the video file and the text log. She didn't delete them. Instead, she compressed them into a single, heavily encrypted archive. With a few keystrokes, she uploaded the file to a ghost server in the deep web, a digital vault that not even she could easily find again unless she knew exactly what she was looking for. She didn't need to prove her innocence to him. But she would absolutely keep the receipt.
She closed the laptop and slid it back into the hollowed book. She walked to her desk and opened the bottom drawer. Inside was a thick manila envelope. She pulled out the document inside.
It was a divorce agreement. Her lawyer had drafted it months ago, but she had never been able to sign it. She had kept making excuses. She had kept hoping.
She picked up a pen. She didn't hesitate. She filled in the date and signed her name in sharp, angry strokes.
She was done waiting for a marriage that was already dead.
