Chapter 2: The Lockup and the Rumors
They didn't let me change my clothes. Two private security guards, wearing tight black blazers that strained at their shoulders, pulled me up from the poolside stones by my upper arms before I could catch my breath. My wet shoes squelched against the polished hardwood floors of the main hallway as they dragged me toward the rear service wing, leaving dark crescent puddles in our wake. Victoria had retreated inside, her voice echoing down the corridor as she demanded the staff be vetted and my room searched immediately. I was shoved roughly into the small, windowless staff holding room beneath the grand staircase—a cramped, dusty space usually reserved for broken chairs and spare linens.
The heavy oak door clicked shut, the sound of the deadbolt sliding home feeling like a judge's gavel. I sank onto the edge of the narrow cot, my arms wrapped tightly around my shivering body as the chill from my wet maid uniform finally settled deep into my bones. My teeth chattered so loudly it sounded like tapping glass in the quiet room. In the dim light of the single overhead bulb, I stared at my hands. They were scraped raw from the rough edge of the pool coping where I had heaved myself and the baby ashore. How had Victoria spun the narrative so fast? She hadn't even been on the patio when the splash occurred; she had been inside pouring champagne for the foundation donors. Yet she had arrived at the exact second I surfaced, ready with a lie that painted my frantic heroism as a murder attempt.
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Outside the heavy door, I heard muffled footsteps and urgent, whispering voices. The other maids—Maria and Sarah—were whispering in the corridor. I pressed my ear against the cool wood, straining to catch fragments of their conversation over the hum of the basement furnace. "...heard she hated the family," Maria's voice whispered, breathless with nervous excitement. "Victoria told the head housekeeper that Elena was jealous of the new baby." A knot of hot, bitter anger tightened in my throat. Jealous? I had worked sixty hours a week, cleaning up after people who looked through me as if I were glass, simply to send money to my aging mother upstate. I had never touched that baby with anything other than absolute care.
I paced the tiny room, my bare feet silent on the dusty floorboards. Sitting here and weeping would only seal my fate; Victoria wanted me disgraced, fired, and possibly arrested before dawn so the police would never look at the security cameras. I needed those cameras. I reached down and tested the old iron doorknob; it was locked tight from the outside, but the brass latch plate looked loose. Using the metal clasp of my apron, I began to pry at the screws, my fingers working frantically in the dark. If I didn't find a way out of this room soon, the truth about what happened by the pool would be buried forever beneath the Sterling family's endless wealth and carefully guarded reputation.
