Chapter 8 - Three Hundred and Twelve Days
Nicholas leaned forward until his chest was nearly touching his knees, his grip on the phone so tight that the metal casing groaned under the pressure of his fingers. "Anna..." he breathed, an involuntary plea tearing from his throat, forgetting in his shock that the video was a pre-recorded broadcast, not a live call.
On the screen, Anna tilted her head slightly, a faint, melancholic smile touching the corners of her lips—a smile devoid of malice, which made it infinitely more terrifying.
"I know how your mind works," she continued, her voice level, melodic, and entirely steady. "Right now, your men are tearing through the marinas in Newport. You've probably had my cousins’ phones tapped. You’ve looked at every private airstrip from Bangor to Miami. You’re sitting in that house, furious, trying to calculate which piece of leverage you forgot to apply, which security protocol failed to keep your property in its vault."
She paused, taking a slow, deep breath. For a second, the faint sound of traffic—distant, generic highway noise—could be heard in the background of the audio track, but there was nothing specific enough to pin to a map.
"You measured my freedom by what you gave me, Nicholas," Anna said, her eyes boring through the lens. "You thought that as long as the closets were full of silk, as long as the diamonds were five carats, and as long as my name was on the foundation checks, I would never look at the bars of the cage. You thought you could purchase my silence with luxury."
Nicholas’s chest heaved. His eyes dropped to his other hand, which was still holding the empty mahogany box.
"Three hundred twelve days, Nicholas," Anna said softly.
The number hit him like a physical blow across the mouth.
His face drained of all color, the blood rushing out of his cheeks until his skin was as gray as the limestone outside.
Three hundred twelve days.
He didn't need to consult a calendar. He didn't need to review his flight logs or his hotel receipts. Three hundred twelve days ago was the second Tuesday of November—the night of the winter gala at the Boston Harbor Hotel. The night he had first met Tessa in the private green room behind the auditorium, where her violin case lay open on the velvet sofa and the scent of expensive rosin and gardenias had filled the air.
"Three hundred twelve days," Anna repeated, her voice dropping lower, the faint trace of sadness in her eyes completely replacing whatever anger she had once harbored. "I knew about Tessa. I knew about the apartment on Commonwealth Avenue. I knew about the emerald ring in Geneva. I knew about the weekends in Montauk while I sat in that cavernous dining room, managing the staff and writing thank-you notes to your business partners."
Nicholas felt the room tilt beneath his feet. All his careful precautions, the burner phones, the encrypted travel itineraries, the offshore transfers he had used to fund Tessa's lifestyle—Anna had known from the very beginning. She had known for nearly a year.
"I didn't stay because I was afraid of you, Nicholas," Anna whispered, her voice tightening with the first hint of raw emotion. "I stayed because I wanted to see if there was a single shred of the man who wrote that letter left inside of you. I waited to see if you would ever look at me—truly look at me—and remember what we promised each other before you traded your soul for this coast."
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She looked down at her hands, then back into the camera, her expression settling into an unshakeable, terrifying peace.
"You didn't. You looked right through me. You kissed my forehead and told me I was safe, while you were boarding a yacht with a woman wearing red satin."
