Chapter 5 - The First Mrs. Miller Who Never LeftThe words hung in the suffocating silence of the hallway.
"First... first wife?" I stammered, the room spinning around me. "Ethan told me I was his first. He told me his college sweetheart died in a car accident!"
Gloria let out a dry, chilling chuckle, adjusting the diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist. "Oh, Ethan always did love a dramatic script. But no, Julianne didn't die in a car accident. She packed a bag one afternoon, just like you are going to do right now, and she threatened to expose the way we raise our heirs. And just like Hailey, she learned that the Miller family secrets never leave this house."
I looked at Ethan. He wouldn't meet my eyes, staring fixedly at the floorboards near my shoes. The cowardice radiating off him was sickening.
"You didn't just abuse my daughter," I whispered, the horror sinking its claws into my chest. "You've been doing this for decades. Every generation... it's a cycle of torture."
"It's tradition," Gloria snapped, her voice suddenly dropping all pretense of politeness, turning sharp and lethal. "Excellence is not born, Sarah. It is forged through absolute submission. My husband built this law firm, this dynasty, on absolute control. You thought you could walk away with our bloodline? You thought Ethan's daughter would grow up to be ordinary? Never."
"Where is Hailey?" I screamed, lunging forward to grab Gloria by the collar of her silk blouse.
Before I could reach her, Ethan stepped in, grabbing my arms and shoving me backward. "Don't touch my mother, Sarah! You're making a mistake!"
"Get your hands off me, you pathetic excuse for a father!" I yelled, driving my knee upward into his stomach.
Ethan doubled over with a gasp, collapsing onto the hardwood floor. I didn't waste a second. I bolted down the main corridor toward the grand foyer, knowing there had to be security monitors or records in Ethan’s private study. If Gloria and Ethan had sent Hailey away, there would be a paper trail—a car service log, a keycard swipe, something.
I reached the study, threw open the mahogany doors, and slammed my hand onto Ethan’s desktop computer.
It wasn't locked.
I frantically clicked through the open browser tabs, bypassing financial spreadsheets, law briefs, and property deeds, until I clicked on a hidden folder labeled ESTATE_ARCHIVE.
My breath hitched.
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Inside the folder were dozens of digital video files. The titles weren't legal documents. They were names and dates, stretching back thirty years.
And right at the top of the list, dated just three hours ago, was a new file: H_ISOLATION_07.mp4.
