Chapter Eighty-Four
Eighty-Four
Mary and Quaddra had sex wearing just their anniversary gifts, and this was the first ever time that Mary had had to fake an orgasm with Quaddra. Not because he didn’t feel good inside her, like he always did, but because she just couldn’t stop thinking about that secret door.
Once Mary was done faking it, Quaddra fell asleep with his arm around her, like he’d done countless times before.
Mary loved when he did that, but not tonight.
Tonight, once they came back from their anniversary dinner, Mary noticed that Quaddra’s office door was still unlocked.
He’d never locked it before they left. After sex, Quaddra never left the room.
He went into the en suite bathroom, but he never actually left their bedroom, which meant that his office was still unlocked.
Once Quaddra placed his arm around Mary, it was like he had locked her in place, so instead of moving, she simply laid there, listening to his breathing, as it slowed down to a steady rhythm, until he’d fallen asleep.
Mary tried to push the image of the door behind the cabinet away from her thoughts… tried falling asleep feeling Quaddra’s warmth surrounding her – something that she had always loved – but tonight it was no good.
What Mary really wanted to do was slowly slither her way out of her husband’s grip, get out of bed, and go check what the hell was behind that secret door, but she’d seen that film before…
plenty of times, actually. This was when fiction imitated real life, or real-life imitated fiction.
Mary wasn’t really sure which, but it always happened…
like Murphy’s Law. As soon as she got out of bed and went into his office again, Quaddra would wake up and catch her there, red-handed.
If Mary got out of bed and went into the kitchen, or to read a book in the study, or even for a run, Quaddra would carry on sleeping like a baby.
He would never even notice that she was gone, but the second that she stepped into his office and activated that secret door mechanism, just like in a movie thriller, he would wake up.
That was just the way the world turned – if something could go wrong, it would.
As Quaddra slept, Mary tried reasoning with herself, arguing that billionaires were eccentric people and that they liked doing things and buying things that they had no real need for, just because they could.
The voice of reason tried to argue that a secret room in the house of the super-rich, more often than not, was nothing special, tending to be something rather silly, like some kind of novelty room.
It pondered that for all she knew, Quaddra could simply have a fridge full of cold beer hidden behind that cabinet.
That was something that the super-rich would do just for the fun of it – just because he saw it in a film and thought it would be a cool thing to have.
Or it could be a collectors’ room, where he kept his hidden collection of baseball cards, or Matchbox cars, or something.
Quaddra was also an investor, so it stood to reason that he would probably have a secret vault in the house somewhere.
What if he invested in gold, and the vault was full of gold bars?
Or diamonds? Or cash? Or anything of extreme value that he didn’t trust the banks with?
Fighting the voice of reason was Mary’s paranoid self, arguing that she had also seen this film before, and Quaddra’s secret room could be an armory, in which case he could be an arms dealer, or a gun for hire…
a paid assassin. He certainly traveled more than enough to warrant that possibility.
That was what paid assassins did, wasn’t it?
Traveled a lot and had a secret weapons room in the house.
At least that was what they did in the films.
The secret room could also be full of drugs, Mary’s paranoid self told her, in which case Quaddra would be a drug lord.
All of those paranoid options terrified Mary, because if any of them were true, her plan was dead in the water.
It wasn’t that hard to con a rich guy out of millions with a wedding sting, or to send him to prison with an ‘abusive husband’ tag, if the plan was well-thought-out and executed, but she couldn’t do that to a drug lord, or a paid assassin.
Those people wouldn’t go quietly. In fact, they wouldn’t go at all.
She was the one who’d be gone… way before she managed to finalize her divorce or take Quaddra to court.
That night, Mary never fell asleep. Her brain just wouldn’t disconnect.
Quaddra did roll over, taking his arm with him, sometime around 1:30 a.m. Mary’s curiosity was killing her.
She needed to know what was behind that secret door, but she didn’t want to get out of bed and risk it.
Murphy’s Law was real. Her life was flooded with examples, and this was one that she didn’t want to add to her long list.
At 5:30 a.m., Quaddra’s alarm went off, half an hour before his regular time, but that was because he needed to be on the tarmac at San Francisco International early. When he rolled over to kiss Mary, she pretended to be asleep.
‘Stay in bed, baby,’ he whispered into her ear. ‘It’s too early. I’m going to shower and shave and get ready. I have to be in Seattle by ten.’
Mary moaned a reply and turned to face the other way.
Quaddra got out of bed, entered the bathroom and closed the door behind him.
Mary opened her eyes and turned to look at Quaddra’s side of the bed.
‘What the fuck do I do?’ she whispered the question to herself.
She knew that this would probably be the only chance that she would get.
She also knew that she didn’t need long.
All Mary wanted to do was to have a look behind that filing cabinet to know what it hid. For that she only needed a few seconds.
From the bathroom, she heard the shower being turned on.
Quaddra liked to shave in the shower, and his showers always took around ten minutes… never less.
Mary only really needed one.
If you’re going to go, you’ve got to go now, the voice inside her head told her.
Mary quickly swung her legs from under the covers and off the bed. She was still naked, wearing just her new diamond necklace. She took a tentative step towards the bedroom door… then a second one before she paused.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ she asked herself. ‘If you want to go, then you better go quick. Stop wasting time by tiptoeing.’
Antonia and Gabriela, the two housemaids, would arrive at 6:00 a.m., so for now, there was only Mary and Quaddra in the house.
Without wasting another second, Mary rushed downstairs to Quaddra’s office. She’d been right – he’d never locked it once they came home from the restaurant. The door was still ajar.
She stole a peak at the stairwell behind her to make sure that it was clear before stepping into the office and quickly reaching for the handle on the drawer at the bottom right of the Victorian chest.
Mary grabbed the handle as firmly as she could and twisted it clockwise.
Click. The sound came from her right, disengaging the filing cabinet from the wall. Mary moved to it in a hurry.
‘Please be a vault,’ she whispered, with her eyes closed, practically making a wish. ‘Please be a vault full of gold bars or something.’
She took hold of the cabinet with both hands and pulled it open, this time, all the way. The movement triggered a row of ceiling lights to come on inside the concealed room. The only problem was – it wasn’t a door… it was a stairwell – and this wasn’t a hidden room… it was a hidden basement.
‘What the fuck?’ Mary gasped, feeling her heart playing catch up with her rapid breathing.
‘Maybe the vault is downstairs,’ she told herself, trying to stay positive.
From the gap behind the cabinet, the stairs, which were solid concrete, moved down about five steps before snaking around and back on itself, which meant that the basement would be directly under Quaddra’s office.
Pure instinct made Mary turn around and look behind her.
Nothing. She was still alone, as she knew she would be. It hadn’t even been a minute since Quaddra had gone into the shower.
Mary drew in a deep breath and took the steps going down into hell knows what. As the stairwell snaked back on itself, she had to go down another twelve steps before reaching the basement at the bottom, and as she did, her body went rigid.
This definitely wasn’t a hidden vault.
It wasn’t an armory or a drugs room either.
This was something much, much worse.