Illusion (Swept Away Book 1) (2 page)

I
never thought I was particularly brave until recently. I don’t enjoy watching horror movies. I sleep with all my doors double-locked, and I go through and check that all my windows are closed tight every night before I go to bed—and I live on the eighth floor of my apartment building. No,
I’m not someone that anyone would call brave and definitely not an amateur sleuth. I’ve always been someone who likes to keep to herself. Some people would call me quiet, but those are the ones who don’t know me well. Inside, I’m a dynamo of activity and fun.

I used to be the sort of person who froze when she heard a creak in the floorboards or heard a sudden scream. My father always used to call me his frightened little rabbit when I was growing up. I heard the term a lot, as there were always sudden and unexplainable noises in New York City. I don’t think he realized that it was his overprotectiveness that led to my lack of trust of most people. However, my whole demeanor changed when my father died. The first twenty-five years of my life faded into obscurity when my father died.

My father died of a broken heart. Or rather I should say he died
with
a broken heart. I don’t think he ever got over my mother’s death. I’m not sure that I ever got over it either, even though I was a young girl when she was killed in a car accident. Her English ancestry was the reason I studied British history in college, and my love of her memory was the reason why when I was given my father’s secret box, I knew I had to do something about its contents. My mother’s death changed my father’s life, and my father’s death changed mine. The moment I read his letter to me was the moment I felt steel implanted in my backbone. It was the moment I knew that I wouldn’t allow anything to frighten me until I found out what really had happened to my mother.

I
wasn’t surprised when the letter arrived. It was only after I read the note that I looked back at the envelope for clues. Only then did I realize there was no postage stamp. Whoever had left the note for me didn’t want any clues leading back to them. I stared at the letter in my hands and shivered slightly. It read simply:

Beauty and Charm. One survives. One is destroyed. What are your odds?

I read it again, trying to make sense of the note. I wasn’t sure what I was supposed to take from it. I picked up the envelope again to see if there was anything inside that I’d missed. While I hadn’t been surprised to receive the letter, I had been surprised by its contents. I hadn’t expected such a blatant threat, though it shouldn’t have surprised me. My father had warned me, in the letter I’d found in his box, that there were people willing to do anything to keep their secrets safe. His letter had stated that he suspected that my mother’s car accident hadn’t really been an accident. However, his suspicions had come too late. It was only on his deathbed that he had started to remember conversations and actions that had happened prior to her death. His letter spoke of his sadness and regret at having shut down after my mother’s death. He felt that if he’d not been in such a deep state of depression he would have made the connections earlier. His letter didn’t
directly ask me to find out the truth, but I could read between the lines. He wanted justice for my mother. It was the reason why he’d written the letter in the first place. The only problem was, my father didn’t say whom he suspected. All he had left me was a one-page letter talking of his suspicions and two boxes full of paperwork from the corporation he’d used to work for, Bradley Inc.

After I’d read my father’s letter and gone through the paperwork he’d left for me, I had started investigating. Well, I’d done my best to get on the inside of Bradley Inc. so I could find clues that might help me figure out what my father had found out and if my mother had been murdered. I hadn’t been careful enough with my investigation, and so I wasn’t surprised I had been contacted. But I was taken aback by the letter. Frankly, it wasn’t what I’d expected to receive.

I stared at the letter in my hands again and frowned. There was a veiled threat and a challenge in the note: “One survives and one is destroyed.”
Destroyed
was a pretty powerful word.
Destroyed
was sending a message. I could feel my fingers trembling as they held the letter. I knew that I was getting close to the truth, close to the answers that would prove my father’s suspicions had been correct. I was about to take out a pen and paper and write down the words I thought were most telling in the note, when I heard a loud banging on the apartment door.

“Open up!” a masculine voice shouted as he banged. “Police.”

Police?
I walked to the door with a perplexed expression.
“I’m coming!” I called out as I opened the door. I immediately felt something was not right—someone had made it into the building without calling up. How had he gotten into the building without someone buzzing him in? I dismissed my thoughts as I realized the police must have master keys to every building in the city, though I still felt some discomfort as I looked at him.

“Are you okay?” The policeman had his hand on his gun in its holster, and I swallowed.

“I’m fine. What’s going on?”

“There was a nine-one-one call from your apartment.” He pushed past me. “And then a hang-up.”

“I didn’t make a nine-one-one call.” I shook my head and pulled my cell phone out of my pocket. “Look, you can check my calls. There is no call to nine-one-one.”

“It was made from your landline, ma’am.”

“I don’t have a landline.” I frowned and followed him around my apartment. My voice rose as I wondered who had called nine-one-one on me. “There must have been a mistake. I can assure you that I didn’t call nine-one-one and hang up.”

“I’m still going to check through your apartment, if that’s okay?” He didn’t wait for an answer.

“I already told you that I didn’t call the police, and I’m the only one who lives here.” I called after him and watched as he walked down the hallways and into my bedroom. I stood still, unable to move as I thought back to the letter that had just arrived. Had the writer of the letter sent the police to my house? And if so, why? Why would the people who killed
my mother want the police involved in the matter? It didn’t make sense. I chewed on my lower lip, deep in thought, when I heard a slamming. “What’s going on?” I walked to my bedroom quickly, my heart pounding. “What are you doing in my room?” My voice was jittery, and I tried not to look in the one place I was scared he would find.

“I was just making sure that no one was in your closets, ma’am. It doesn’t hurt for me to make sure everything is okay.” He walked out of my room with a slight frown. “All looks clear.”

“I already told you that.”

“You have any issues, you call us.” His eyes searched mine as he spoke and then he handed me a card. “You can’t be too careful these days.”

“I’m very careful.” I walked him to the door and wondered if I should tell him about the note I’d just received. I was about to, when I remembered what my father had always told me when I was growing up: “The pockets of the rich are deep. Bianca, only trust someone if they give you reason to trust them. Even the police aren’t above being bribed.” “Thank you for your concern, Officer.” I nodded at him and waited for him to leave. My heart was pounding, and I needed to think.

“No worries. Stay safe, Ms. London.” He nodded his head, and I closed the door. It was only after he left that I realized he knew my name. How did he know my name?

I leaned against the door and closed my eyes. What was going on here? Today was turning into one mysterious day.
First the note, and then the police showing up. I didn’t know: who sent the note, why they sent the note, who called the police, how he had gotten into my building, and how he knew my name. I chewed my bottom lip as I tried to figure out what was going on. I stared around my apartment, and suddenly the coziness of the room felt claustrophobic. I’d always loved living in New York City, but today my small one-bedroom felt like a cell. That the building had seemed so safe when I moved in suddenly felt like a fallacy. I didn’t know my neighbors, and I had no one to talk to about how the policeman had gotten into the building or the mysterious letter that had arrived.

The dirty peeling walls directly opposite seemed to be closing in on me as I stood there hoping for clarity to hit and questions to be answered miraculously. I walked to my tan leather couch and sat down, leaning back into the plushness of the cushions. It was the only nice piece of furniture I owned. And even then it had been a gift from my best friend, Rosie. I could barely afford the rent in my apartment as it was, and I wasn’t living in Trump Tower either.

I picked up the bright red-and-orange-patterned cushions that my father had gotten me in India when I was a teenager and then froze as my cell phone rang. The noise was jarring in my eerily quiet living room. I normally always had the TV on or music playing; I didn’t like being in quiet spaces for too long. It reminded me of how alone I was. I grabbed my cell phone and dropped it when I saw the screen. My father’s phone number flashed on the screen. My
dead
father’s phone
number. I stared at it before reaching down and picking it up again.

“Hello?” I answered softly, my voice cracking as I wondered who was calling me from my dad’s phone. I was pretty sure I still had it in a box in my bedroom. I took a deep breath to stop myself from freaking out and jumped off the couch. “Hello,” I spoke into the phone again with my voice trembling, this time unable to hide how freaked out I was by the call.

“You should be more careful, Bianca,” a deep male voice spoke into the phone. I couldn’t make his voice out clearly, as the phone had a lot of static.

My voice rose. “Who is this?”

“You shouldn’t let strangers into your apartment.”

“I haven’t let any strangers into my apartment.”

“Anyone can be anyone. Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“What are you talking about?” My face started to feel hot as I sat there in fear.

“Be careful of those who seek to help you. They may do more harm than good.” Then he hung up.

I stared at the phone in my hand and ran to my bedroom to find my dad’s phone. The box of my father’s things was on the bed, and the lid was off. I ran over to it and saw that the phone was gone. Who could have taken it? No one had been in my apartment in weeks. No one except the policeman, but why would a policeman go through my things? Unless he hadn’t been there to help protect me from an
intruder—perhaps he was there to find something to protect someone else.

I looked down at the business card he had given me and froze. It was blank. All he had given me was a piece of white card stock. It was then that I knew this was the next step in whatever was going on. I knew then that the policeman had been looking for my father’s papers. The papers that he’d left me were full of clues. It didn’t matter that I didn’t fully understand them yet. Obviously someone else wanted them.

I walked to the window in my living room and looked down to the street. I stared at the homeless woman who’d settled into the block directly across the street a couple of weeks ago. The woman I gave a couple of dollars to once a week as I passed by her. The woman who quoted a different Bible verse to me every time she saw me. The woman who shivered even when the days were warm. The woman who wore a Cartier watch and had freshly dyed highlights. The woman who knew exactly when I left and entered the building. I didn’t know who she was, friend or foe, but I knew that she was watching me.

I walked back to my bedroom and stared at my father’s box for a few minutes before closing it carefully and placing it back in my closet. I was grateful that I had removed my father’s papers from the box several weeks ago. I hadn’t known why at the time, but I’m someone who always listens to her first instincts. I then went to my dirty-clothes basket, pulled out my clothes, and threw them onto the floor. I instinctively looked around the room again to make sure it was empty,
even though I knew there was no one in there with me. I pulled out my mother’s old cedar jewelry box that I’d hidden under the clothes and slowly opened it. I let out a huge sigh of relief when I saw the stack of papers hidden under the cheap costume necklaces I had bought at Goodwill. I carefully closed it again, carried it with me to the kitchen, and placed it in a plastic bag. Then I pulled my cell phone out again and made a call.