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Part 4: The House of Lies

I took a cab back to the house, slipping in through the back door.

Garrison’s Audi was already parked in the driveway. He was home early.

I gritted my teeth, forcing myself to step into the living room. Garrison was sitting on the sofa, holding the broken lock from his desk drawer. His face was a mask of terrifying, lethal calm.

The photos were scattered across the coffee table.

“Where did you go today, Brynn?” Garrison asked, his voice dead and hollow.

I couldn’t panic. The text message warned me he would kill me if I threatened his secrets. I had to play the only card I had: the heartbroken, emotionally shattered wife.

I let my eyes well up with tears. I let my voice crack.

“Where did I go?” I sobbed, pointing a shaking finger at the photos. “Why don’t you ask me what I found, Garrison?! Who is she?! Why does she look exactly like me?!”

I collapsed to my knees, burying my face in my hands, weeping hysterically.

“I thought you loved me!” I wailed, playing the victim perfectly. “But I’m just a replacement, aren’t I? A pathetic understudy for a dead woman!”

Garrison’s lethal demeanor fractured. He had expected me to be terrified, to have discovered the money. He hadn’t expected the messy, emotional meltdown of a jealous wife.

He rushed forward, dropping to his knees, trying to pull me into his arms. I shoved his chest, screaming at him not to touch me.

“Brynn, listen to me,” Garrison pleaded, his eyes shining with perfectly manufactured sorrow. “Yes, you look like her. When I met you, I was drowning in grief. I thought it was fate. But I fell in love with you. Not her.”

He picked up a photo of Serafina. “She died in a horrific fall at Widow’s Bluffs. I couldn’t save her. I kept these photos because I felt guilty for moving on. I swear to God, Brynn, you are the only woman I want.”

He sounded so incredibly sincere. If I didn’t have the bank ledger in my pocket, I would have believed him.

He threw the photos into the fireplace, lighting a match and burning the evidence of his past. He thought he was erasing his mistake. He had no idea the real secret was safe in my pocket.

That night, my phone buzzed under my pillow. It was a text from Griffin.

I pulled the files on the dead PI. The hit-and-run was a cover-up. The brake lines on his car were surgically severed. But before he died, he was investigating a massive Ponzi scheme run by a shell company called Apex Holdings.

Another text popped up immediately.

The CEO of Apex Holdings, who vanished with fifty million dollars five years ago, is a man named Desmond Blackwood. Serafina’s older brother.

My blood turned to ice.

Serafina’s brother stole fifty million dollars. And now, millions were being funneled into Serafina’s bank account every year.

Garrison was laundering the stolen money.

But Griffin wasn’t done. The final text made my heart stop entirely.

Brynn, I dug into the police report from Serafina’s death at Widow’s Bluffs. The responding officer was Chief Inspector Roland Graves. He ruled it an accidental fall, sealed the file, and forced the entire precinct to sign NDAs. Graves is notoriously corrupt.

Roland Graves.

The name triggered a memory. At a company Christmas party two years ago, Garrison had introduced me to his “old college buddy,” Roland Graves, who was wearing a pair of custom, polished leather oxfords.

The exact same oxfords from the torn photograph in the humidor box.

Garrison. Serafina. Desmond. Roland Graves. It was a massive, blood-soaked syndicate.

But what really happened on that cliff?

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