Chapter 2 - The Shattered Glass
"We saw her!" Ethan sobbed, wiping his bloody nose with his sleeve. "Before lunch, Victoria took the shiny watch from your nightstand and put it in Miss Emily’s tote bag in the laundry room. She told us if we said anything, she would send us to a dark house in another country where we’d never see you again!"
Richard looked as if the earth had opened up beneath his feet. "No... Victoria told me she found it..."
"She locked us in the pantry so we couldn't tell you!" Liam cried out, pointing a trembling, bloody finger back toward the grand gates of the Hawthorne estate. "We had to smash the glass cabinet to get the key! That's why we're bleeding! We broke the glass to run to Miss Emily!"
The silence that followed was suffocating.
Richard looked down at his sons' bloody hands. The shattered glass. The ripped clothes. The terror in their eyes.
They had risked cutting themselves, broke through locked doors, and sprinted barefoot across asphalt just to stop the woman who cared for them from being thrown away.
Emily looked up from the pavement, her gaze locking onto Richard’s.
"I told you I didn't take it, Mr. Hawthorne," she said quietly. Her voice wasn't filled with anger—it was filled with an overwhelming, painful disappointment. "I worked for you for three years. I held these boys when they had nightmares. I stayed up with them when they had fevers. And you threw me out on the word of a woman who has been in their lives for six months."
Richard took a slow, agonizing step backward. The magnitude of his mistake hit him like a physical blow. He had prided himself on being a master negotiator, a brilliant strategist who could read anyone in a boardroom. Yet, inside his own home, he had been blind, foolish, and cruelly manipulated.
Before Richard could speak, the clicking of high heels echoed down the driveway.
May you like
Victoria Lane stepped through the estate gates, wearing a pristine cream dress, her face set in an expression of tragic concern.
"Richard, darling!" Victoria called out, her voice dripping with fake anxiety. "Thank goodness you caught them! The boys went completely insane—they destroyed the butler's pantry and ran out! I think Emily put them up to this to ruin our engagement!"
