Page 4 of The Chosen
“Sarah,” she whispered.
Everything inside me went still. “What about Sarah?”
Ariana drew in a trembling breath. “Victor didn’t kill her, Henry.”
“Who did?”
“No one.”
My world stuttered. Paused. Waited to fall apart.
“What are you saying?”
“Sarah’s alive.”
Chapter One
Henry
The coppery scent of blood settled in the back of my throat, mingling with gunpowder and the citrus cleaner the housekeeper had used. The steady ticking of the grandfather clock filled the heavy silence.
A few feet away, Victor Kane lay motionless in a pool of red.
Dead.
The sight of him should have brought relief. Closure. Something.
Instead, it felt like the floor had shifted beneath me.
Like I was standing on the deck of a ship caught in a violent squall.
My pulse roared in my ears as Ariana’s words replayed in my mind.
Victor didn’t kill her. Sarah’s alive.
I understood each word individually. But together, they made no sense, my brain struggling to comprehend her statement.
“What do you mean?” My voice sounded foreign, raw with fear, guilt, and a myriad of other emotions I couldn’t name.
Ariana’s chest rose and fell in ragged breaths as she grasped my hand in hers, sensing I needed something to keep me grounded. I looked down at our joined hands, mine rough and trembling, hers stained with Victor’s blood.
“Exactly what I said.” She touched a hand to my cheek, forcing my gaze to hers. “Sarah… She’s not dead.”
I pushed out a breath, as if she’d just punched me in my gut. Freeing myself from her hold, I stepped back, my mind reeling.
For the better part of the past year, I’d been fueled by vengeance. By the certainty that Victor had killed Sarah and I’d make him suffer for what he’d done.
To learn he hadn’t killed her, that she might have been alive and suffering while I blindly chased revenge?
The guilt was unbearable, a heavy weight crushing my chest, making it nearly impossible to breathe.
How could this be?
I saw the police report myself. Read it so many times the words were branded into my brain. Saw the photographs. Saw the body sprawled out against white sheets.
It looked so much like Sarah that I never questioned if it was her. The only thing I did question was whether she’d killed herself, when all along I should have questioned whether she was actually dead.
Could she be alive? Would Victor have faked not just her murder but her actual death?
