The scream stayed trapped behind Naomi Carter’s teeth. She had worked inside the stone walls

The cellar suddenly felt like a tomb.

Naomi didn't step back. The wall was three feet behind her anyway. Instead, she slipped the thumb drive into the pocket of her slacks and kept both hands firmly clamped on the leather ledger behind her waist.

“Mr. Vale thinks you’re at the hospital,” Naomi said, keeping her voice dead level.

“Adrian thinks what I tell him to think,” Celeste replied with a dismissive chuckle. “Right now, Adrian is asleep in the private family lounge, courtesy of a mild sedative Malcolm slipped into his herbal tea. He won’t wake up until six tomorrow morning. Which gives us plenty of time to resolve our domestic staff problem.”

Voss stepped forward, pulling a small leather medical kit from his coat. “Celeste, we need to be quick. If she screams, the night guard might hear.”

“Frank is asleep, Malcolm. I gave him a two-hundred-dollar bottle of bourbon as a ‘thank-you’ for his service tonight,” Celeste said smoothly, her eyes locked on Naomi. “Hand over the book, Naomi.”

“You’re married to Julian Vance,” Naomi said, pitching her voice clearly into the damp cellar air. “You’ve been married to him for eight years. You came into this house to strip Adrian of every dollar his grandfather built.”

Celeste’s smile didn't waver. In fact, it widened, revealing straight, porcelain-veneered teeth that looked predatory in the dim light.

“Adrian is an arrogant boy playing with billions he didn't earn,” Celeste said casually. “He thought a girl like me would fall for his brooding billionaire routine? Julian and I planned this the day Vale Meridian launched its public offering. It took eighteen months to position me in the same charity circuit. It took six months to get this ring on my finger. And that old witch upstairs was the only one who didn't buy the routine.”

“She knew you were poisoning her,” Naomi said.

“She suspected,” Voss corrected, stepping closer, his syringe glinting in the pale light. “Suspicion is not medical evidence. A stroke victim’s paranoid delusions hold no weight in probate court. And unfortunately for you, Naomi, a disgruntled housekeeper caught stealing from the estate safe during a family crisis will have zero credibility.”

“Is that the story?” Naomi asked, her eyes darting to the left, calculating the distance to the heavy oak butcher’s block on the worktable. “A burglary gone wrong?”

“A very tragic one,” Celeste agreed. “You came down here to loot the wine collection and family silver before your dismissal. You slipped on the wet cellar steps, fell, and suffered a fatal skull fracture. Dr. Voss will confirm the blunt-force trauma was consistent with an accidental fall. It’s neat. It’s clean. And it saves me the annoyance of firing you twice.”

Voss moved in, reaching for Naomi’s arm with one gloved hand while raising the syringe with the other.

Naomi didn't scream. She didn't flinch.

She waited until Voss was within eighteen inches, then whipped the heavy black ledger from behind her back and slammed the metal-reinforced corner of the spine directly into the bridge of his nose.

Cartilage crunched. Voss cried out, dropping the syringe as blood exploded down his lips and chin. He stumbled backward, clutching his face in agony.

Celeste’s eyes widened in shock. “Malcolm, grab her!”

Naomi didn't hesitate. She grabbed a magnum of 1961 Chateau Latour from the packing table by the neck and hurled it with both hands straight at Celeste’s chest.

Celeste threw her arms up with a shriek. The heavy glass shattered against her forearm, splashing hundreds of dollars of deep red vintage wine across her designer leather jacket and spraying sharp shards across the floor.

Naomi bolted.

She didn't head for the cellar stairs—Celeste was already recovering, blocking the path with a broken bottle neck in her hand. Instead, Naomi darted into the secondary tunnel—the old servant passages that ran beneath the mansion, connecting the cellar to the boiler room and the exterior coal chute.

“Get her!” Celeste screamed behind her, her voice shrill and stripped of all polish. “Don't let her leave this house alive!”

Naomi ran through the darkness, her shoulder scraping against raw brick. She knew every bend. Three paces left. Four paces straight. A wooden door with an iron latch.

Behind her, Voss’s heavy, wheezing breaths and Celeste’s cursed footsteps echoed off the arched ceiling.

Naomi reached the boiler room. The massive iron furnace radiated a low, rumbling heat. The coal chute opened five feet above the floor on the eastern wall, leading up to the gravel alley behind the kitchen garden.

She threw the ledger up into the chute first, hearing it land with a dull thud in the wet grass above.

Then, she grabbed the rusted iron rungs welded into the brick and hauled herself upward.

A hand seized her ankle.

Celeste’s nails bit into the fabric of Naomi’s sneaker, pulling downward with vicious strength. “You’re not ruining this for me! Do you hear me? I worked two years for this empire!”

Naomi looked down into the shadowy, blood-spattered face of the woman who had terrorized Evelyn Vale.

With her free leg, Naomi kicked backward with all the force of eleven years of hard physical labor, planting the heel of her shoe squarely into Celeste’s chest.

Celeste lost her grip and crashed backward onto the concrete floor of the boiler room, the wind knocked out of her in a ragged gasp.

Naomi scrambled through the metal chute, emerged into the pouring rain, grabbed the ledger from the mud, and sprinted into the woods toward the back gates.

She didn't stop running until the headlights of a Greenwich police cruiser swept across North Street.