CHAPTER 1: THE WOMAN ON THE FLOOR
Caleb’s words did not echo.
They detonated.
“Mom… she’s the mayor’s daughter.”
Eleanor Whitfield stood at the top of the marble staircase as if someone had struck her across the face.
For the first time in all the years the servants had known her, Eleanor looked unsure of where to place her hands.
Amelia lay in Caleb’s arms at the bottom of the stairs, pale and trembling, one hand still pressed over her stomach.
“Call an ambulance,” Caleb said.
No one moved.
His voice dropped lower.
“Now.”
A maid ran for the phone.
Eleanor slowly descended the staircase, each step quieter than the last.
“Caleb,” she said, forcing calm into her voice. “You don’t understand. She provoked me.”
Caleb looked up at her.
The man who had spent his whole life obeying his mother was gone.
“You pushed my pregnant wife down the stairs.”
Eleanor’s lips tightened.
“She lied to you. Women like her always lie.”
Amelia opened her eyes weakly.
“I never lied,” she whispered.
Caleb bent closer.
“Don’t talk. Save your strength.”
But Amelia’s fingers clutched his sleeve.
“Caleb… the papers.”
His face changed.
“What papers?”
Amelia swallowed through pain.
“The ones in your father’s study.”
Eleanor froze.
The entire foyer seemed to lose air.
Caleb slowly turned his head toward his mother.
“What papers, Mom?”
Eleanor’s face hardened again, but fear had already slipped through the cracks.
“She’s delirious.”
Amelia shook her head, tears sliding into her hair.
“No. She knows.”
The ambulance sirens began to scream in the distance.
Caleb stared at Eleanor with a coldness she had never seen in him before.
“You better pray my wife and child survive,” he said.
Then he lifted Amelia into his arms and carried her out of the mansion.
Behind him, Eleanor stood alone beneath the chandelier.
May you like
And for the first time, she looked less like the queen of the Whitfield family…
…and more like a woman whose throne had just started to burn.
