Chapter 1
The soup hit my lap like liquid fire, but I did not give Victoria the scream she wanted. I only sat there in the locked attic, blind, shaking, and smiling at the woman who thought my darkness meant defeat.
“Eat off the floor, you blind bat,” Victoria hissed, her fingers twisting in my hair as she yanked my head back. “Once I forge your signature, your father’s empire will fund Grant’s campaign, and no one will remember either of you.”
The attic window rattled in the winter wind. Somewhere below, the old mansion groaned, all marble halls and dead portraits, pretending it still belonged to my family. My father had built Vale Meridian from one burned-out laboratory and a stubborn dream. Now Victoria wore his wedding ring on one hand and held a forged power-of-attorney form in the other.
“You killed him,” I whispered.
She laughed softly. “The fire killed him. Chemicals are so unpredictable.”
I could not see her face anymore. Not since the “accident” that had taken my sight, scorched my world, and supposedly buried my father beneath a sealed coffin. But blindness had sharpened other things. I knew Victoria’s perfume—white lilies and expensive poison. I knew the nervous tap of her nails. I knew the cheap leather shoes of her campaign lover, Grant Bellamy, pacing behind her.
“Make her sign,” Grant snapped. “The donors arrive tomorrow.”
Victoria bent close. “Hear that? Even politicians have schedules.”
She shoved a pen between my fingers. My hand trembled, but not from fear. The bowl had fallen, soup spreading across the wooden floorboards. My service dog, Atlas, barked from behind the locked door downstairs, frantic and furious.
“You sent the nurses away,” I said. “You dismissed the house staff. You thought no one would hear.”
“No one important,” Victoria said.
I lowered my burned hand toward the paper. “Read it to me first.”
Grant laughed. “She wants legal courtesy.”
Victoria slapped the arm of my wheelchair. “It transfers controlling interest, liquid assets, and voting rights to me as your guardian. A tragedy, really. Poor blind Amelia Vale, too unstable to manage anything.”
My thumb brushed the rim of my bracelet. One click would transmit. Two clicks would unlock the live feed. Three clicks would end the game.
I clicked once.
Victoria heard only a faint metallic sound.
May you like
“What was that?” she asked.
“My father,” I said quietly, “used to say every empire needs a witness.”
