CHAPTER 2 – The Dead Man’s Warning
Isabella read the first sentence again.
Then a third time.
Her hands shook so violently that the paper rattled between her fingers.
“Isabella, I am alive—and the man standing beside you has spent twelve years trying to keep you alive.”
A suffocating silence filled the ballroom.
Hundreds of guests stared at her, waiting for an explanation.
But Isabella could no longer hear them.
All she could hear was the pounding of her own heart.
She looked at Ethan.
He was lying on the marble floor, one hand pressed against the wound in his chest. Blood seeped between his fingers, staining his shirt and pooling beneath him.
His face had gone pale.
Still, his eyes remained fixed on her.
Not accusing.
Not angry.
Almost relieved.
As if he had been waiting years for her to discover the truth.
“Call an ambulance!” someone shouted.
A woman screamed for a doctor.
But Isabella didn’t move.
She lowered her eyes back to the letter.
“The evidence against Ethan was fabricated. Every photograph, every transaction, and every recording was created by someone inside our family.”
Her stomach twisted.
Inside their family?
Her eyes moved slowly across the room.
Her mother, Victoria, stood near the stage in a silver gown, one hand pressed dramatically over her mouth.
Beside her was Isabella’s younger brother, Adrian.
He looked horrified.
But something about his expression felt wrong.
His eyes weren’t fixed on Ethan.
They were fixed on the letter.
And for one brief second, Isabella saw fear flash across his face.
Not grief.
Fear.
She continued reading.
“Do not trust the person who gave you the photographs from Prague.”
Isabella stopped breathing.
Only three people knew about those photographs.
Ethan.
Her private investigator.
And Adrian.
Six weeks earlier, Adrian had arrived at her apartment after midnight carrying a black folder.
Inside were photographs of Ethan entering an abandoned warehouse in Prague with the man accused of arranging her father’s fatal car crash.
Adrian had held her while she cried.
He had told her that Ethan had betrayed the entire family.
He had helped her find the knife.
He had even suggested tonight’s anniversary gala would be the only place Ethan couldn’t escape.
Isabella slowly raised her head.
“Adrian…” she whispered.
Her brother took one step backward.
Victoria immediately moved in front of him.
“Don’t listen to that letter,” she snapped. “It’s obviously fake.”
Her voice was too sharp.
Too fast.
Isabella stared at her mother.
“How did you know what it said?”
Victoria froze.
The entire ballroom seemed to shift.
Guests began exchanging confused looks.
Adrian’s face went white.
On the floor, Ethan coughed painfully.
“Isabella…” he rasped. “The second page.”
She looked down.
There was another sheet folded behind the first one.
Her fingers were slick with Ethan’s blood as she opened it.
A photograph fell from the letter and landed near her shoes.
It showed her father standing outside a small hospital.
The image was recent.
He looked older, thinner, and frightened.
But there was no doubt.
It was him.
Alive.
A date had been printed in the corner.
Three days ago.
Isabella’s knees nearly gave way.
“My father…” she whispered.
Victoria lunged toward the photograph.
But Isabella stepped back.
“Don’t touch it.”
Her mother stopped.
For the first time that night, Victoria’s elegant expression cracked.
“You don’t understand what you’re doing.”
“Then explain it.”
“I was protecting you.”
“From whom?”
Victoria’s eyes flickered toward Ethan.
But Ethan shook his head weakly.
“She isn’t protecting you,” he said. “She’s protecting the company.”
Security guards moved closer, unsure whom they were supposed to restrain.
Isabella looked at the final paragraph.
“Your mother and brother discovered that Ethan’s father left him controlling ownership of Carter Global. They needed your marriage to survive until the transfer was complete. After that, they planned to kill him and frame you for it.”
The words blurred.
Isabella felt the knife slip from her hand and strike the floor.
She had not stopped a murderer.
She had completed someone else’s plan.
A siren wailed outside the hotel.
Paramedics rushed through the ballroom doors.
As they lifted Ethan onto a stretcher, Isabella grabbed his hand.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “Ethan, I swear I didn’t know.”
His fingers barely moved around hers.
“I know.”
“You knew I was going to do it?”
His eyes filled with pain.
“I knew someone had been poisoning you against me.”
“Then why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because every time I tried…”
He glanced toward Victoria.
“…someone disappeared.”
The paramedics began rolling him away.
Suddenly, the ballroom lights went out.
The room plunged into darkness.
Guests screamed.
A gunshot cracked through the air.
Then another.
When the emergency lights flickered on, Adrian was gone.
Victoria was kneeling beside the stage, staring at the floor.
And the photograph of Isabella’s father had vanished.
But that wasn’t the worst part.
A security guard lay unconscious near the exit.
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Written across the wall behind him in Ethan’s blood were five chilling words:
YOUR FATHER WAS NEVER THE TARGET.
