Chapter 3 - The Story She Was Forced to Tell
Three weeks earlier, Sienna had awakened at the bottom of the Ashford estate’s west staircase.
Pain burned through her shoulder.
Her head rested against the carpet.
One hand covered her stomach.
The baby was still moving.
That was the only thing that mattered.
Garrick stood six steps above her.
He did not rush down.
He did not call her name.
He stared at her with the cold irritation of a man whose plan had gone wrong.
“You slipped,” he said.
Sienna tried to sit up.
“What?”
“You slipped while carrying laundry.”
“I wasn’t carrying anything.”
Garrick came down slowly.
He crouched beside her and lowered his voice.
“If you tell anyone we argued, my mother will say you are trying to destroy this family.”
Sienna remembered the argument clearly.
She had found a bank statement inside Garrick’s desk.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars had been moved from a company account into a private consulting firm.
When she confronted him, he grabbed the statement.
She refused to release it.
He shoved her.
Not hard enough to send her flying.
Just hard enough to make her injured ankle miss the edge of the stair.
She fell six steps.
At the hospital, Garrick never left her alone.
Whenever a nurse asked what happened, his hand rested on Sienna’s shoulder.
She could feel his fingers tightening.
“I slipped,” she told them.
The baby survived.
Her shoulder did not escape uninjured.
Doctors secured her right arm in a sling and ordered strict rest.
Miriam arrived that evening.
She did not ask whether Sienna was afraid.
She looked at Garrick and said, “You need to be more careful.”
Sienna heard her.
So did Garrick.
That was when she understood Miriam knew.
After returning home, Sienna was expected to continue preparing meals and attending formal dinners.
Garrick said canceling events would create questions.
On Sunday morning, Miriam told her she would serve the roast herself.
“People need to see that this family is functioning normally.”
Sienna obeyed because Garrick had taken her phone, controlled the household accounts, and threatened to use her “instability” to seek emergency custody after the baby was born.
But he made one mistake.
He did not know Sienna had sent a photograph of the bank statement to her mother before the fall.
Her mother had spent three weeks quietly investigating.
And the consulting firm receiving Ashford money belonged to Dr. Nathan Vale.
May you like
The same physician who had treated Sienna in the emergency room.
👉 The doctor who recorded Sienna’s fall as an accident had received a secret payment from Garrick only hours after she left the hospital.
