Chapter 2 - Locked in the Dark
When I opened my eyes, everything was pitch black.
A sharp, throbbing ache pounded behind my forehead, making my pulse echo loudly in my ears. I was lying on a cold, concrete floor. The air smelled heavy with dust, dry cleaning chemicals, and old cardboard.
I tried to sit up, but my body felt heavy and unresponsive. My silk bridesmaid dress was torn at the shoulder, and my bare feet were numb.
"Felicity?" I croaked out, but my throat was so dry the word came out as a barely audible rasp.
I reached out into the darkness, my fingers scraping against rough drywall until I hit a row of metal shelves. I pushed myself up to a knee, resting my forehead against the cool steel to stop the world from spinning.
I was inside a small, windowless storage room.
I stumbled toward where I remembered the entrance was and found a heavy wooden door. I grabbed the polished brass handle and yanked.
Locked.
I threw my shoulder against the wood, hammering my fists against the paneling. "Hey! Somebody open the door! Help!"
Silence answered me. No footsteps, no muffled reception music, nothing.
I felt around in the dark for my phone, but my pockets were empty. My clutch was gone.
Desperate, I turned back to the room. I felt along the wall until my palm brushed against a light switch. I flipped it up. A single fluorescent tube overhead flickered to life, buzzing loudly as it cast a harsh glare over the tiny space.
It was an archive room filled with old estate files, stacked folding chairs, and abandoned catering boxes.
I turned toward a shelf full of plastic storage bins, looking for anything heavy enough to break the door handle. That’s when my knee knocked into a dusty steel filing cabinet shoved in the back corner.
The bottom drawer had popped open slightly from the impact.
Inside wasn't corporate tax paperwork or venue receipts. Resting right at the top was a thick manila envelope sealed with red tape, labeled with my mother’s name: Eleanor Vance - Confidential Estate Audit (1998).
My mother had died in a hit-and-run accident twenty-six years ago, when I was only two years old. Felicity and I had been raised by our father, who never spoke of her.
My shaking hands tore through the wax seal.
Inside were dozen of high-resolution glossy photographs.
The first photo showed a young, smiling woman holding a baby—my mother. Standing right behind her, holding a champagne glass, was a much younger Diane.
But it was the next set of photos that made my heart drop into my stomach.
They were surveillance photos taken in a darkened parking garage. One showed Diane handing a heavy briefcase of cash to a man wearing a city mechanic's uniform. Attached to the back of the photo was a signed affidavit from a forensic mechanic, dated three days after my mother’s death.
Vehicle sabotage verified: Brake lines cut intentionally.
Beneath the affidavit was a copy of my mother’s last will.
She hadn't left her multi-million-dollar real estate firm to my father. She had left fifty percent of everything in a trust fund explicitly dedicated to me—a trust fund that Diane had been managing as a court-appointed custodian for over twenty years.
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The sedative in my blood was still making my heart hammer, but the terror was gone. It was replaced by a cold, burning rage.
Diane hadn't just drugged me to stop a scene at a wedding. She had locked me away because I was three weeks away from turning twenty-eight—the exact age when my mother’s trust fund was set to auto-transfer into my name.
