Chapter 5 - THE GHOST FROM THE PAST
When I came to, my head thudded with a dull, throbbing pain, as if someone were pounding a hammer against my skull.
The air smelled damp, moldy, and thick with the scent of rusted iron and old dust. I tried to move my hands, but sharp friction bit into my wrists. I was tied securely to a heavy wooden chair in what looked like an abandoned industrial warehouse. Shafts of afternoon light pierced through broken skylights high above, illuminating dancing specks of dust in the cavernous space.
"Well, well, well. Look who decided to wake up."
The voice came from the shadows near a rusted support beam.
A man stepped forward into the pale beam of light. He was in his late forties, with weathered skin, a ragged gray beard, and cold, sharp eyes that held decades of bitterness. He wore a faded denim jacket and carried a scarred leather duffel bag.
I blinked against the glare, my throat bone-dry. "Who... who are you?"
The man chuckled—a dry, raspy sound. "Name's Thomas Miller. But the last time Rachel Collins and I spoke, she called me her best friend right before she framed me for a ten-million-dollar wire fraud and let me rot in a federal pen for twelve years."
My breath hitched. Thomas Miller. The ex-con from Arkansas. The very man I had read about in the court archives hours before the ambush.
"You're... you're her former partner," I managed to croak out.
Thomas walked slowly around the chair, his boots clicking rhythmically against the concrete floor. He stopped in front of me, leaning down slightly to look me in the eye.
"And you're the foolish ex-wife of the lawyer she kidnapped," Thomas said, his expression unreadable. "Victoria—or Rachel, as I’ve known her—thought she tied up all her loose ends a long time ago. But then she panicked because some rag doll landed on your doorstep with a USB drive inside."
"She's going to kill me," I whispered, tears finally breaking free and spilling down my cheeks. "And she's going to go after my daughter. Please... you have to help us. She ruined your life, too."
Thomas stared at me for a long, agonizing moment. The silence in the warehouse was deafening, broken only by the distant cooing of pigeons nesting in the rafters.
Slowly, a grim, slow smile spread across his weathered face.
"Kid, you don't have to convince me to hate Rachel Collins," Thomas muttered, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a heavy hunting knife.
I flinched, my heart leaping into my throat.
With two swift motions, the blade sliced through the thick nylon ropes binding my wrists and ankles. I tumbled forward out of the chair, landing hard on the concrete, gasping for air as blood rushed back into my numb hands.
"She thinks I'm still some broken-down ex-con living on the fringes," Thomas said, tossing the knife onto the floor. "She doesn't know I spent twelve years inside studying every single offshore account, every shell corporation, and every corrupt official she paid off to build her Beverly Hills empire."
He reached into his duffel bag and pulled out a heavy black laptop, slamming it onto a wooden crate in front of us. He spun the screen around.
On the display was a live satellite feed of a sprawling, heavily guarded estate tucked away in the canyons of Beverly Hills.
"That's where Harrison is being held," Thomas said, pointing a calloused finger at a reinforced basement bunker beneath the mansion's tennis courts. "And that's where Rachel is heading right now, thinking she's won."
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I rubbed my sore wrists, adrenaline surging through my veins. "We have to go. We have to get him out before she kills him."
Thomas looked down at me, his eyes dead serious. "We aren't just going to rescue your ex-husband, Sarah. We're going to take everything Rachel Collins owns, strip her of her fake crown, and watch her empire burn to the ground."
