9. Amanda
— ? —
Amanda
Vivienne’s apartment is on the third floor of a building that’s seen better days.
The hallway smells like mildew and someone else’s cooking. The carpet is stained. The lights flicker.
I think about the mansion. The crystal chandeliers. The white orchids.
This is what Julian discards.
I knock.
For a long moment, nothing happens. Then footsteps. The scrape of a chain being undone.
The door opens.
My sister looks like a ghost.
Not the golden creature who lounged in my bed two years ago, all long hair and red nails and satisfied smiles. This woman is thin. Pale. Dark circles under her eyes. Her hair is pulled back in a messy ponytail, and she’s wearing sweatpants and an old t-shirt that’s stained at the shoulder.
Spit-up, I realize. She’s wearing spit-up.
“Amanda.” She says my name like she’s been expecting me. Like she’s been dreading this moment for months. “I wondered when you’d show up.”
“Can I come in?”
She hesitates. Looks past me into the hallway.
“Are you alone?”
“Does it matter?”
Another hesitation. Then she steps aside.
The apartment is small. One bedroom, a kitchenette, a living room that’s drowning in baby supplies. A playpen in the corner. Toys scattered across the floor. Bottles on every surface.
And in the middle of it all, a toddler on a play mat.
Thomas.
He has Julian’s eyes.
Something twists in my chest - a complicated knot of anger and grief and what might be pity.
This child exists because my sister destroyed my life.
It’s not his fault.
“He’s beautiful,” I say.
Vivienne laughs. It’s a harsh, bitter sound.
“He’s a reminder. That’s what Julian called him. A reminder of a mistake he doesn’t intend to repeat.”
“Julian kicked you out.”
“Julian erased me.” She sinks onto the couch. Doesn’t offer me a seat. “The second your conviction started falling apart, I became a liability. Just like you always were.”
“I wasn’t a liability. I was a wife.”
“You were a placeholder.” She throws my own words back at me - the words Julian said in our bedroom, a lifetime ago. “We were both placeholders. You just figured it out faster.”
I don’t sit. I stand in the middle of her cramped living room, surrounded by the wreckage of the life she stole from me, and I look at my baby sister.
I want to feel triumph.
I don’t.
“Why did you text me?”
Vivienne’s eyes flicker to Thomas, then back to me.
“Because you’re the only person who might actually take him down.”
“You want to help me destroy Julian?”
“I want to survive.” Her voice cracks. “I have a son, Amanda. A sixteen-month-old son whose father won’t acknowledge him, whose grandmother - our mother - died before she could really know him, whose entire future depends on a man who threw us away like garbage.”
“Our mother died thinking I was a killer. Because of you.”
Vivienne flinches. Good.
“I know.”
“She wouldn’t visit me. Two years in prison, and she never once-” My voice breaks. I hate that it breaks. “She died believing the worst about me. Because you lied.”
“I know.”
“Say it.”
“What?”
“Say what you did.” I step closer. “Look me in the eye and say it. I need to hear you say it.”
Vivienne’s hands are shaking. She clasps them together in her lap, but I can see the tremor.
“I was driving,” she whispers.
“Louder.”
“I was driving.” Her eyes meet mine. “I took your keys. I was drunk and angry - Julian told me to disappear, to go home and stay quiet until the gossip died down, and I was so stupid, so humiliated, I grabbed the first keys I saw on the valet board and-” She stops.
Swallows. “I hit that man. Thomas Mercer. I killed him. And then I called Julian, and he... he handled it.”
“He framed me.”
“He said it was the only way. He said if I went to prison, I’d lose the baby. He said-” She’s crying now. Ugly, heaving sobs. “He said you were stronger than me. That you could survive it. That you’d understand, eventually.”
“Understand?” The word comes out like a blade. “You let me go to prison for two years. You let our mother die thinking I was a murderer. You took everything from me - and you thought I’d understand?”
“I was scared!”
“I WAS INNOCENT!”
Thomas starts to cry. A thin, startled wail that cuts through the room.
Vivienne scrambles to pick him up. Rocks him against her shoulder. Her face is wet with tears.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “Amanda, I’m so sorry-”
“Sorry doesn’t give me back two years. Sorry doesn’t bring back Mom. Sorry doesn’t fix anything.”
“I know. I know it doesn’t.” She looks at me over Thomas’s head. The baby is quieting now, his sobs turning to hiccups. “But I can give you something else.”
“What?”
“The truth. All of it.” Vivienne takes a shaky breath.
“I know where Julian keeps the real evidence. Not the servers he wiped - the backups. The physical copies. He’s paranoid, Amanda.
He doesn’t trust digital. He has files. Recordings.
Documentation of everything he’s ever done - including that night. ”
My heart stops.
“Where?”
“A safe deposit box. At a private bank downtown. I know the location. I know the box number.” She hesitates. “I don’t have the key. But Roman might be able to-”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I have nothing left to lose.” Vivienne’s voice is hollow. “Julian took everything. My money. My future. My son’s future. He’s going to disappear, Amanda. Leave the country. Start over somewhere we can’t touch him.”
“What?”
“He’s been planning it for months. Ever since your conviction got vacated. He has accounts overseas, properties, a whole new identity waiting.”
The floor drops out from under me.
“When?”
“Sunday.” Vivienne’s eyes are desperate. “He flies out Sunday night. Private jet. Once he’s gone, you’ll never touch him. The witnesses won’t matter. The evidence won’t matter. He’ll be untouchable.”
Sunday.
That’s four days away.
Four days to find proof. Four days to expose what he did. Four days to stop him from disappearing forever.
“The safe deposit box,” I say. “Where is it?”
“First National Private. Third and Main.” Vivienne shifts Thomas to her other shoulder. “But Amanda - the key. You need the key. And Julian never lets it out of his sight. It’s on a chain around his neck. He sleeps with it.”
“Then I’ll take it while he’s awake.”
“He has security. Cameras. Alarms. You can’t just walk in and-”
“I walked in yesterday.” I smile. It’s not a nice smile. “He didn’t stop me then. He won’t stop me now.”
Vivienne stares at me. Fear crosses her expression. Or maybe awe.
“You’ve changed.”
“Prison changes people.”
“No.” She shakes her head slowly. “This is something else. You’re... harder. Colder. You’re-”
“I’m what he made me.” I turn toward the door. “I’ll be in touch about the box. Don’t leave town. Don’t contact Julian. And Vivienne?”
“What?”
“If you’re lying to me - if this is some kind of trap, some play to get back in his good graces - I will destroy you. Not Julian. Me. And I’ll make sure Thomas grows up knowing exactly what his mother did.”
She goes pale.
“I’m not lying.”
“You’d better not be.”
I’m halfway out the door when she speaks again.
“Amanda.”
I stop. Don’t turn around.
“I know you hate me. You should hate me. But-” Her voice breaks. “I loved him. Julian. I actually loved him. I thought he loved me back. I thought if I gave him everything - my body, my loyalty, my sister - he would finally see me. Finally choose me.”
I turn.
Vivienne is standing in the middle of her ruined living room, holding the child of a man who threw her away, crying the tears of a woman who’s lost everything.
I should feel satisfaction.
I feel nothing but cold.
“He doesn’t love anyone,” I say. “He’s not capable of it. You should have known that before you destroyed my life for him.”
“I know that now.”
“Then help me end him.”
“I am. I’m trying.”
“Try harder.” I meet her eyes. “Sunday, Vivienne. We have until Sunday. And if he gets away - if he disappears before I can make him pay-”
“I know.” She nods. “I know what’s at stake.”
I walk out of her apartment.
Down the stained hallway. Through the flickering lights. Into the gray afternoon.
Roman is waiting in the truck.
“Well?” he asks.
“Sunday.” The word feels like a death sentence. “Julian flies out Sunday. Private jet. New identity. Gone forever.”
Roman’s jaw tightens. “That’s four days.”
“I know.”
“She told me where to find it. Physical evidence. Everything. A safe deposit box downtown.”
“You trust her?”
I think about Vivienne’s face. The fear. The desperation. The baby on her shoulder.
“I trust that she has nothing left to lose.”
“That’s not the same thing.”
“No.” I look at him. “But it’s all we’ve got.”
Roman is quiet for a moment. Then he reaches for my hand.
“What do you need?”
“The key to the box is on a chain around Julian’s neck. He never takes it off.”
“So we need to take it off for him.”
“Yes.”
“That means getting close. Getting past his security. Getting-”
“I know what it means.” I squeeze his hand. “Four days, Roman. We have four days to break into my husband’s house, steal a key off his body, open a safe deposit box, and find enough evidence to stop him from fleeing the country.”
“Sounds impossible.”
“Everything we’ve done so far has been impossible.” I look out the window at the gray sky, the crumbling building, the wreckage of my sister’s life. “Why stop now?”
Roman starts the engine.
“Where to?”
I think about Sunday. About Julian’s jet. About the man who destroyed my life disappearing forever, taking all his secrets with him.
Four days.
“Take me somewhere I can think.” I close my eyes. “We need a plan.”
The truck pulls away from the curb.
The clock starts ticking.