Chapter 2 - The Seventh Access Code
I didn't open it.
“Emily?”
Damon tried the handle.
Locked.
I slid the ultrasound photograph beneath the pillow and closed the security application.
“What happened to your meeting?” I asked.
Silence.
Then: “It ended early.”
Another lie.
I opened the door.
Damon stood fully dressed now, wearing the same spotless white shirt he'd claimed had been covered in coffee.
He studied my face.
“Are you okay?”
“Just tired.”
He glanced toward my phone.
I turned it facedown.
For a moment, I wondered whether he knew Margaret had contacted me.
But then he touched my belly.
I stepped back.
The movement was small.
He noticed.
“Emily?”
“Nausea.”
He nodded.
That night, I pretended to sleep.
At 2:17 a.m., Damon left our bedroom.
I heard his footsteps downstairs.
A door opened.
Then his low voice.
“You weren't supposed to come here.”
I slipped from bed.
The hallway was dark.
His voice came from the kitchen.
“I told you I'd handle Emily.”
A pause.
“No. She doesn't know.”
My stomach twisted.
Then Damon said something that changed the shape of the entire betrayal.
“Claire was supposed to keep Owen distracted until the transfer was finished.”
Transfer?
I moved closer.
A chair scraped.
“You need to leave,” Damon whispered.
I risked looking around the corner.
He was alone.
Phone pressed to his ear.
“I'll get Emily's signature.”
My blood turned cold.
“My wife trusts me.”
I stepped backward.
The floor creaked.
Damon turned.
I barely reached the stairs before he emerged from the kitchen.
“Emily?”
I held my stomach.
“I need crackers.”
He stared at me.
Then smiled.
“I'll get them.”
The next morning, I waited until Damon left.
Then I called Owen.
He answered on the second ring.
“Emily?”
“We need to meet.”
Something in my voice silenced him.
“Where?”
“Not my house.”
Forty minutes later, we sat across from each other in a quiet café.
I placed my phone between us.
First photograph.
Damon.
Second.
The camisole.
Third.
Claire's hand.
Owen stared at the ring.
His face emptied.
“No.”
I said nothing.
He looked again.
“No.”
“I saw her.”
His eyes closed.
“How long?”
“At least four months.”
He pushed back from the table.
Then he surprised me.
“I know about the code.”
I stared at him.
“What?”
“0417.”
“How?”
“Because it wasn't created for Claire.”
He pulled out his phone.
“The code existed before Damon met her.”
He showed me an old message Damon had sent him two years earlier.
Use 0417 if you ever need to get inside.
“Why would Damon give you Claire's birthday?”
“He didn't.”
Owen looked sick.
“April seventeenth isn't only Claire's birthday.”
“Whose is it?”
Owen hesitated.
“Damon's mother.”
My pulse jumped.
Margaret.
So Claire had not created the code.
She had inherited it.
“Damon told me Margaret died.”
“He told me the same thing.”
I showed Owen the kitchen footage.
His face changed when Margaret appeared.
But when I told him she had whispered his name before the feed died, he looked genuinely terrified.
“Emily, I've never met that woman.”
“Then why did she know you?”
“I don't know.”
He leaned forward.
“But I know something else.”
He explained that Damon had recently pressured him to invest in a private real-estate development.
Owen had refused.
Two weeks later, Claire suddenly began asking him detailed questions about his finances.
“Bank accounts. Trusts. My father's estate.”
“And you didn't think that was strange?”
“I thought we were getting married.”
The sentence hurt because I understood it perfectly.
Trust made intelligent people ignore obvious things.
“What transfer was Damon talking about?”
Owen's expression sharpened.
“What transfer?”
I repeated the phone conversation.
He went pale.
“My company.”
“What?”
“Damon has been trying to buy a controlling stake.”
“Can he?”
“Not without another investor.”
“Who?”
Owen looked at the image of Claire.
Then at me.
“Someone with access to a large trust.”
My hand moved instinctively toward my belly.
Six months earlier, my grandmother had died.
She had left me a significant inheritance.
Damon had offered to “handle the paperwork.”
I had signed several documents.
Suddenly I couldn't breathe.
Owen grabbed my wrist.
“Emily.”
“I signed things.”
“What things?”
“I don't know.”
His face hardened.
“We need copies.”
I called our financial adviser.
No answer.
I called again.
Voicemail.
Then my phone buzzed.
An email.
Your requested documents are attached.
I hadn't requested anything.
I opened it.
A trust statement appeared.
My daughter's name was printed across the top.
BENEFICIARY: BABY HALE.
Below it was an account balance large enough to make my hands shake.
Then I saw the authorized trustee.
DAMON HALE.
But underneath his name was another.
CLAIRE BENNETT.
Owen stopped breathing.
“My fiancée is trustee of your daughter's inheritance?”
“I never authorized this.”
Another notification appeared.
SECURITY ALERT.
ACCESS CODE USED.
I opened the log.
Then another number appeared beneath it.
A code I had never seen before.
Owen stared.
“What is that?”
I didn't know.
But someone was entering my house.
I opened the live camera.
A man stepped through the kitchen.
Owen leaned closer.
His chair scraped violently backward.
Because he recognized him.
“My father,” he whispered.
I stared at Owen.
“You told me your father died.”
“He did.”
May you like
The man on the camera lifted his face.
And looked directly at us.
