Chapter 2: The Closet of Skeletons
The aftermath was a blur of police sirens and shocked staff. Seraphina sat in the living room, surrounded by lawyers she had summoned, trying to spin a narrative of a "crazed, lying servant." But Julian wasn't listening to the lawyers. He was listening to the voice recording on the drive Elena had handed him.
He walked to the "hidden" closet in the guest wing—a door he had rarely opened, trusting Seraphina’s claim that it was just for seasonal storage. He forced the lock.
It wasn't storage. It was a workspace.
Inside, he found burner phones, ledgers filled with offshore account numbers, and, most damning of all, a stack of birth certificates and hospital records.
Julian’s heart hammered. He sat on the floor, reading the documents. Seraphina hadn't just been "socializing" in Europe during their first two years of marriage. She had been managing a surrogate scandal, a child she had given away to hide a previous, secret marriage that had ended in a scandal she couldn't afford to have public.
And Elena? Elena wasn't just a maid. Elena was the daughter of the woman Seraphina had paid off to keep the secret quiet—the woman who had died under "suspicious circumstances" years ago. Elena had taken the job to find the truth, and the abuse she suffered was Seraphina’s desperate attempt to keep her silent.
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The door behind him creaked open. Seraphina stood there, no longer faking sweetness. Her face was a mask of cold, calculated malice.
"You shouldn't have looked, Julian," she said, her voice chillingly calm. "Now you know why I had to do it. You were the ticket to the life I deserved. I couldn't let a servant and a dead past ruin it."
