My Husband Paraded His Mistress At My Ball — So I Took Everything He Owned
Part 2
Brian stood up instantly, demanding to know what the letter said.
My hands trembled slightly as I handed the cheap parchment across the mahogany desk.
Heather wrote that she was a fool for trusting him but not a murderer.
She revealed that Craig knew about her massive debts and my frozen accounts.
He had met with a man from the docks in the middle of the night.
He purchased something meant for my tea or my daily medicine.
He intended to ensure I did not survive to see the inside of a courtroom.
Once I was dead, the divorce proceedings would vanish and he would inherit my entire fortune as a grieving widower.
Heather begged me to meet her at the cathedral plaza at midnight.
She had proof of his purchase, but she needed safe passage out of the country in return.
If Craig found out she was warning me, he would undoubtedly kill her too.
Brian stared at the letter while his jaw clenched so hard a muscle ticked in his cheek.
Our legal battle was no longer a simple matter of scandal and public humiliation.
It was now a desperate matter of life and death.
The gas lamps along the river did little to pierce the thick, sulfurous smog that night.
I sat rigidly inside a closed carriage rattling toward the cathedral.
Brian sat beside me as an imposing, unmoving silhouette in the dim light.
He had flatly refused to let me go alone.
He meticulously dismantled and restructured our plan of attack over the last eight hours.
His voice was a low murmur as he warned me to run if he gave the word.
I noted the hard set of his jaw and the heavy metallic weight of the revolver resting in his lap.
I told him I had survived five years in a cage with that man and I would face him.
The carriage pulled to a halt at the edge of the sprawling plaza.
The massive stone cathedral loomed in the fog like a sleeping leviathan.
We moved together toward the southern portico cloaked in deep shadow.
A frantic whisper hissed from the terrifying darkness.
Heather stepped out from behind a marble pillar, terrified and shivering under a tattered shawl.
She thrust a small glass vial and a crumpled ledger receipt toward my hands.
She choked out that the poison would cause my heart to simply stop beating.
She wept that Craig had laughed at her and planned to leave her to the wolves once he had my money.
Brian stepped forward and inspected the receipt closely in the dim light.
He confirmed it was a direct bill of sale bearing Craig’s unmistakable handwriting.
Heather cried out that she had done her part and begged for her ticket to America.
Then the sharp metallic sound of a gunhammer echoed through the portico like thunder.
Heather froze as a terrified scream died silently in her throat.
Three figures emerged from the thick fog rolling off the church steps.
Two massive thugs with heavy wooden cudgels flanked the center figure.
Craig stood there with a silver-plated pistol leveled firmly in our direction.
As he aimed the pistol directly at my chest with a manic, triumphant smile, I looked at the man I had married and wondered—was this cold, fog-drenched plaza about to become my grave?
