The Stone mansion sat like a fortress on East 82nd Street, its limestone facade glowing under the streetlights. Victoria crouched in the shadows of the service entrance, her black clothes making her nearly invisible against the night. Three years of planning had led to this moment—breaking into her own home like a common thief.
The irony wasn't lost on her.
She'd spent months studying the mansion's security system, memorizing guard rotations and camera blind spots. Lucas had upgraded everything after Aria's "death"—motion sensors, infrared cameras, enough technology to protect a government building. But he'd kept one thing the same: the emergency exit code. Their anniversary date, the numbers Aria had chosen because she thought it was romantic.
Some things never changed. Lucas was still sentimental, even when sentiment made him vulnerable.
Victoria punched in the code and slipped through the service door into the kitchen. The space hit her like a physical blow—granite countertops where she'd made Emma's birthday cake, the breakfast nook where they'd shared morning coffee, the wine fridge where Lucas kept her favorite bottle of Bordeaux. Everything exactly as she'd left it, like a museum of her former life.
She forced herself to focus. Nostalgia was a luxury she couldn't afford tonight.
The mansion was dark and silent. Lucas was at a conference in Chicago—she'd made sure of that before planning this break-in. Sara was probably at her own apartment, playing the perfect fiancée who gave her man space for business trips. Only the night security guard remained, and he was currently doing his rounds on the third floor.
Victoria moved through the main hallway like a ghost, her soft-soled shoes silent on the marble floor. Family portraits lined the walls—generations of Stone men staring down with cold eyes and colder smiles. Her own wedding photo had been removed, of course. Sara wouldn't want reminders of the woman she'd replaced.
The study door was exactly where she remembered, heavy oak with brass fittings that probably cost more than most people's cars. Victoria picked the lock in under thirty seconds—a skill she'd learned during her three years of preparation. Amazing what you could accomplish when you were supposed to be dead.
The study looked different in the darkness. Moonlight streamed through tall windows, casting long shadows across Lucas's desk and the leather chairs where they used to discuss their days. The safe sat behind a painting of Lucas's grandfather, hidden but not forgotten.
Victoria pulled out a small LED flashlight and moved to the wall. The painting swung aside easily, revealing a digital safe with a ten-digit keypad. She stared at the numbers, her heart hammering against her ribs. Three chances before the alarm triggered. Three chances to get this right.
She tried Emma's birthday first. December 15, 2019. The lock beeped softly and stayed red.
Her own birthday next. May 22, 1996. Another beep, still red.
Victoria's fingers hovered over the keypad. One more chance. One more guess before security came running and her entire plan fell apart. She closed her eyes and thought about Lucas, about the man she'd married, about what mattered most to him.
Their wedding date. June 8, 2020. The day Lucas had called the happiest of his life.
She punched in the numbers: 0-6-0-8-2-0-2-0.
The lock beeped once and turned green.
"Sentimental bastard," Victoria whispered, pulling open the heavy door.
The safe was larger than she'd expected, filled with documents, jewelry, and several thick manila folders. Victoria's breath caught when she saw her own engagement ring sitting in a velvet box, the three-carat diamond catching the moonlight like a tear. Lucas had kept it. After everything, after Sara, after three years of supposed moving on, he'd kept her ring.
She pushed the emotion aside and focused on the documents. Property deeds, stock certificates, legal papers—all the mundane machinery of wealth and power. But tucked between a trust fund document and Emma's birth certificate, Victoria found what she was looking for.
A life insurance policy with her name on it.
Her blood turned to ice as she read the details. Five million dollars. Purchased December 8, 2021—exactly one week before her car accident. The beneficiary line made her stomach drop: Stone Family Trust, administered by Richard Stone.
Not Lucas. Richard.
Victoria's hands shook as she photographed every page with her phone. This was it—proof that her death had been planned, that someone had been expecting to profit from her murder. But why would Richard take out a policy on her? What did he gain from her death besides removing an unwanted daughter-in-law?
She flipped through more documents, looking for answers. Bank statements, investment records, corporate filings—and then she found it. A second insurance policy, this one for fifty million dollars. Same dates, same beneficiary, but this policy had a clause that made her blood freeze.
Double indemnity for accidental death.
Someone hadn't just planned to kill Aria Stone. They'd planned to make it look like an accident and collect a hundred million dollars in the process.
"Jesus," Victoria breathed, photographing the policy with trembling fingers. "You sick fuck."
She'd known Richard hated her, but this was beyond hatred. This was cold, calculated murder for profit. Her death hadn't been about family honor or protecting the bloodline. It had been about money. A hundred million dollars was more than enough motivation to kill an inconvenient daughter-in-law.
Victoria kept searching, looking for more evidence. She found investment records showing the Stone Family Trust had been hemorrhaging money for years—bad deals, failed developments, Richard's gambling addiction that Lucas probably didn't even know about. The trust needed an infusion of cash, and Aria's death had provided it.
But there was something else, something that made Victoria's skin crawl. A folder marked "Contingency Plans" contained documents that made her realize how deep this conspiracy went. Not just her murder, but plans for Lucas's death too. If the grieving widower had an accident within five years of his wife's death, another fifty million would flow into the trust.
Richard Stone hadn't just killed his daughter-in-law. He was planning to kill his own son.
Victoria's phone buzzed with a text. James, her lookout: Guard heading to first floor. You have maybe two minutes.
She quickly photographed the remaining documents, her hands steady despite the adrenaline coursing through her veins. This was more than she'd hoped to find, more evidence than she'd dreamed possible. Richard Stone had signed his own death warrant with these papers.
As she closed the safe and swung the painting back into place, Victoria heard footsteps in the hallway. Heavy boots on marble, moving with the measured pace of a security guard doing his rounds. She should run. Should slip out the way she'd come and disappear into the night.
Instead, she did something reckless.
Victoria pulled out her compact and dabbed perfume behind her ears—the same scent she'd worn as Aria, the one Lucas would recognize instantly. Then she slipped behind the heavy curtains just as the study door opened.
The guard's flashlight beam swept across the room, checking corners and shadows. Professional, thorough, but not expecting to find anything more dangerous than a curious rat. The beam passed over the curtains twice before the guard moved on, satisfied that the study was empty.
Victoria waited until his footsteps faded before emerging from her hiding place. She had what she'd come for, and more. The evidence in her phone would destroy Richard Stone and probably save Lucas's life in the process.
But as she moved toward the door, Victoria couldn't resist one last gesture. She pulled out her lipstick—Cherry Lush, the same shade she'd left on the terrace—and wrote a single word on Lucas's desk blotter: "SOON."
Let him wonder. Let him worry. Let him remember the wife he'd thought was safely buried.
Victoria slipped out of the study and made her way back through the mansion, past the ghosts of her former life and the echoes of happier times. The kitchen door closed behind her with barely a whisper, and she vanished into the New York night like she'd never been there at all.
Except for the faint scent of flowers and memory that lingered in the study like a promise.
Three hours later, Lucas stood in his study, staring at the single word written in familiar handwriting on his desk. His phone had woken him at 2 AM—the security company calling to report a "minor anomaly" in the mansion's system. A brief power fluctuation, nothing more. Probably just a glitch.
But the house felt different. Wrong. Like someone had been there, moving through his space, touching his things. The feeling was so strong he'd driven straight home from the airport, his Chicago conference forgotten.
And now this. One word in handwriting that made his chest tight with recognition and impossibility.
"SOON."
Written in lipstick. Cherry Lush, if he wasn't mistaken. The same shade that had been haunting him for days.
Lucas pulled out his phone and called the head of security. "I want every camera checked, every system analyzed. Someone was in my house tonight."
"Sir, our logs show no security breaches. No alarms, no forced entry—"
"I don't care what your logs show. Someone was here." Lucas's voice was sharp with barely controlled panic. "And I want to know who."
He hung up and stared at the word again. Soon. Soon what? Soon he'd understand? Soon he'd remember? Soon his dead wife would come home?
Lucas laughed, a sound with no humor in it. He was losing his mind. Had to be. Dead wives didn't break into houses and leave lipstick messages. Dead wives stayed dead.
But as he reached for a tissue to clean the desk, Lucas caught a scent that made him freeze. Flowers and vanilla and something indefinably feminine. Aria's perfume. The same fragrance he'd been smelling in impossible places ever since Victoria Crow walked into his life.
Lucas sank into his desk chair, his hands shaking. Either he was having a complete mental breakdown, or something impossible was happening. And he wasn't sure which option scared him more.
End of Chapter 5