Chapter 2 - The Escape
"Leave it," Daniel muttered in the dark, the frustration evident in his hushed voice. "We'll force her to sign the transfer papers over coffee tomorrow. She'll be so groggy from the dose she won't even read them. Come on."
The bedroom door clicked shut.
I lay in the suffocating darkness for ten agonizing minutes, listening to their footsteps fade down the hallway. When the house finally fell silent, I sat up and spat the bitter, half-dissolved pill into a tissue.
My hands were shaking, but my mind had never been clearer.
Daniel had spent months looking for the physical deed to my estate, convinced I had absentmindedly misplaced it. He was wrong. I quietly slipped out of bed, crept to the back of my closet, and reached into the lining of my late father’s heavy winter coat. My fingers brushed against the thick manila envelope I had sewn inside three years ago.
My father had been a cautious man. Before he passed, he gave me this envelope and a single instruction: "If you ever find yourself in a corner you cannot escape, take this to Silas Thorne. He owes me a life debt."
I had never met Silas Thorne, but all of Chicago knew his name. He was a ruthless billionaire developer, a ghost in the financial underworld who crushed his rivals without a second thought. Coincidentally, he was also the exact man my husband had spent the last two years desperately trying to pitch his failing startup to.
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I didn't pack a bag. I didn't grab my coat.
I climbed out the first-floor bathroom window into the freezing midnight rain, clutching the envelope to my chest, and ran.
