CHAPTER 5: The Sweet Old Woman Was the Mastermind All Along
Every conversation stopped.
Every breath seemed to disappear.
More than two hundred guests slowly turned toward the elegant elderly woman standing near the champagne fountain.
She wore a pearl necklace.
White gloves.
A gentle smile.
Moments earlier, everyone had comforted her after the shooting.
Now...
Every detective had their weapons pointed directly at her.
The woman laughed softly.
"My dear child..."
She looked at Lily with warm eyes.
"Children often imagine things."
Lily immediately hid behind Noah.
"No," she whispered.
"I remember your perfume."
The woman's smile faded.
"You smelled like roses..."
"...and you pushed me."
Lily's mother gasped.
The accident.
For two years everyone believed Lily had been struck by a speeding delivery truck.
No witnesses.
No evidence.
Just a tragic accident.
But Lily remembered.
Noah stepped forward.
"It wasn't an accident."
Detective Harris frowned.
"You knew?"
Noah nodded.
"The moment Lily described the perfume."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a tiny gold locket.
"My mother gave this to me before the helicopter crash."
Inside the locket was a faded photograph.
The elegant old woman stood beside Noah's parents.
Smiling.
Like family.
Victor Ashford's face turned ghostly white.
"It can't be..."
He staggered backward.
"Margaret..."
The woman slowly removed her white gloves.
"So..."
"You finally recognize me."
The ballroom exploded with whispers.
Margaret Ashford.
Victor's older sister.
The woman who had supposedly died in a yacht explosion eighteen years earlier.
She wasn't dead.
She had been hiding...
Watching...
Planning.
Victor's voice trembled.
"We buried you."
Margaret smiled.
"You buried an empty coffin."
Police officers rushed forward.
But she calmly raised one finger.
"Take one more step..."
"...and everyone in this building dies."
Silence.
She pressed a small remote hidden inside her ring.
A red light flashed.
Then another.
Then another.
Tiny blinking lights appeared beneath the stage...
Inside flower arrangements...
Even beneath the VIP tables.
Bombs.
The ballroom erupted into panic.
Guests screamed and ran for the exits.
But every door slammed shut automatically.
The emergency locks had been activated.
Margaret laughed louder.
"For eighteen years..."
"I built this moment."
Victor stared at her.
"Why?"
Her eyes burned with hatred.
"Because Father gave everything to you."
"I built the company."
"I sacrificed my youth."
"And he handed the empire to his favorite son."
She pointed at Noah.
"His bloodline ends tonight."
Noah calmly stepped in front of Lily.
"If you wanted me..."
"...why wait until now?"
Margaret smiled.
"Because I needed every member of the Ashford family together."
She looked at Victor.
Then at Noah.
Finally...
At Lily.
"When the building explodes..."
"The police will believe the assassins planted the bombs."
"My name will disappear forever."
She slowly lifted the remote.
Her thumb rested on the red button.
Victor shouted,
"No!"
Margaret smiled one final time.
"Goodbye."
She pressed it.
...
Nothing happened.
The smile disappeared from her face.
She pressed it again.
Still nothing.
Confused, she stared at the remote.
Then a familiar voice echoed through the ballroom.
"I replaced your detonator twenty-three minutes ago."
Everyone turned toward Noah.
He calmly held up an identical remote control.
Margaret's face lost all color.
"You..."
"How?"
Noah smiled for the first time.
"Because while everyone was watching Lily stand..."
"I was watching you."
Just then...
The ballroom doors burst open.
An elite bomb squad flooded inside.
Behind them walked a man no one had expected to see alive.
The security guard who had taken the bullet.
He removed the bandage from his shoulder.
There was no wound.
He had been wearing body armor.
He looked directly at Margaret and said,
"The game is over."
Margaret's hands began to shake.
But before the police could reach her...
She laughed one last time.
"You still haven't figured it out..."
Victor frowned.
"What?"
Margaret looked straight at Noah.
"The real traitor..."
"...is standing beside you."
Every eye slowly turned toward the one man everyone trusted most.
Detective Harris.
And for the first time that night...
May you like
He quietly reached for the gun hidden beneath his jacket.
TO BE CONTINUED...
