Chapter 7 - The Shadow of Revenge
While I was settling into my new corner office—complete with panoramic views of Narragansett Bay and a mahogany desk that smelled faintly of lemon oil—Rachel Morgan was experiencing the brutal, unyielding reality of social exile.
Her downtown apartment lease, which had been guaranteed by Daniel Hayes’s corporate credit line, had been revoked within twenty-four hours of the wedding disaster. Her mother, Eleanor, overwhelmed by humiliation and the sudden freeze on her country club accounts, had retreated to her estate in Newport and pulled the heavy iron gates shut against the world.
Even Julian Vance, the man who had helped blow up the wedding, had ghosted her. When Rachel called his private cell three times on Monday afternoon, his voicemail greeting simply informed callers that the number was no longer in service.
Desperate, furious, and utterly broke, Rachel sat in a leather booth at a dingy diner three miles outside of Newport, staring at her phone screen with bloodshot eyes. Her designer handbag—the very one she had used to carry the flash drive she thought was safe—sat empty beside her half-finished black coffee.
"She ruined me," Rachel whispered to herself, her fingernails digging so hard into the plastic tabletop that her knuckles turned white. "That miserable little teacher and her bastard child took everything I built. I won't let them win."
Her phone buzzed violently against the table.
It was an unknown number.
Rachel snatched it up, her heart leaping with a desperate sliver of hope. "Hello? Julian? Is that you?"
"It's not Julian, Miss Morgan," a cold, modulated voice crackled through the speaker.
Rachel froze. "Who is this?"
"Let's just say I'm someone who hates Daniel Hayes and his new corporate golden girl just as much as you do," the voice replied smoothly. "And I happen to know that the flash drive your niece stole wasn't the only copy of your files in existence."
May you like
Rachel’s breath caught in her throat. "What are you talking about?"
"I'm talking about an insurance policy," the voice said, soft and poisonous. "Meet me at Pier 4 behind the old fish cannery at midnight. Come alone. We're going to plan how to take Hannah and Daniel down together."
