Chapter 10 - Marta’s Glance
Marta saw Vivienne’s driver in the staff hallway thirty minutes before my room was ransacked.
She told us in the small housekeeping office with the door shut and her hands clenched around a ring of keys. Marta was young, maybe twenty-two, and usually too shy to hold eye contact for long. That night she looked terrified enough to bolt.
“I didn’t think it mattered until Eli said Tessa’s room was destroyed,” she whispered.
Grant leaned one shoulder against the filing cabinet, giving her space but not softness. “Tell it exactly.”
“I was carrying clean towels,” she said. “Mr. Cross’s—” She stopped, corrected herself. “Ms. Cross’s driver, the tall one, the shaved head, he was near this corridor. He said he’d been looking for the downstairs powder room.” Her face twisted with uncertainty. “But the staff wing is the wrong direction.”
“What time?” Eli asked.
“A little after five.”
That was before the hospital release, while the house was half-emptied by confusion and security movement.
“Did he go into Tessa’s room?” I asked.
“I didn’t see him enter,” Marta said. “But when I came back ten minutes later, he was gone.”
Grant’s expression flattened into something lethal. “Name?”
“Anton. I think.”
Eli nodded once. “That’s her driver.”
Marta’s breathing steadied now that the words were out. “There’s more.”
We all went still.
“She was here too. Ms. Cross.”
My pulse kicked.
“In the hallway?”
Marta nodded. “Earlier. She asked if Tessa had returned from the hospital yet. I said no. Then she smiled at me.” Marta shivered visibly. “Not kindly.”
That was enough to build a real chain: Vivienne asking about my whereabouts, her driver appearing near my room, my hidden evidence disappearing. Not proof beyond dispute, but more than suspicion.
Grant turned to Eli. “Pull gate logs. Vehicle movement. Staff camera coverage. Everything.”
“We’re on it.”
Marta looked ready to cry. “Am I in trouble?”
“No,” I said quickly. “You did the right thing.”
She gave me a grateful glance, but her fear wasn’t gone. It had simply changed shape. Speaking truth in wealthy households never made people feel safer immediately. It made them feel marked.
Grant seemed to understand that now. “Eli will make sure you’re not alone tonight.”
After she left, silence sat between us for a moment.
Then Grant said, “Why didn’t you tell me about the recordings earlier?”
The question was fair. I hated that.
“Because I had already decided if I told you too soon, you might think I was manipulating you.”
“Was that the only reason?”
“No.” I folded my arms to stop my hands from shaking. “Because people like Vivienne win by getting believed first. And until today, she always had more of your trust than I did.”
He didn’t deny it.
Instead he said, “You won’t be alone in this now.”
I looked at him. “That sounds better than it feels.”
That landed. He let it.
Eli reentered holding printed gate records. “Anton left the property at five forty-two. Re-entered at six seventeen claiming he was sent to retrieve Ms. Cross’s overnight bag.”
Grant’s stare hardened. “By whom?”
“No written authorization. Verbal clearance from front staff.”
“Who cleared him?”
Eli checked. “Temporary guard. Reassigned from events. Already gone off shift.”
Convenient.
The structure of the battle kept shifting: evidence, witness, sabotage, witness, legal framing, sabotage again. No space to breathe.
And then the larger question surfaced in my mind with terrible clarity.
“How did Anton know where my room was?” I asked.
Eli and Grant both looked at me.
The staff wing wasn’t obvious from the public side of the house. Guests didn’t wander there. Drivers certainly didn’t.
Someone had told him.
Grant said it first. “There’s help on the inside.”
Power shift.
Not just Vivienne versus us.
Someone in the Mercer house was feeding her access.
As if summoned by the thought, my phone buzzed. I checked the screen and went cold.
A new message from an unknown number.
Stop pretending this is about Noah. We know what you really wanted from Grant.
I showed Grant.
He read it, face unreadable.
Then he asked the question I had feared from the beginning, the one capable of poisoning every protection I had built around the truth.
May you like
“Did you ever give anyone a reason to think that?”
📖 Marta connected Vivienne’s driver to my destroyed room—but Grant’s question about my motives cut deeper, because for the first time he voiced the doubt her side wanted him to keep. 👇
