Chapter 2 - The Police and the Promise
Within ten minutes, the tranquil suburban street was swarming with flashing red and blue lights. The hazmat team arrived shortly after, securing the perimeter in thick yellow tape. Detectives in cheap suits peppered Julian and Elise with questions they couldn't answer. Who had enemies? Who held a grudge? Julian answered with measured, careful lies, assuring the police it must have been a random act of violence.
He couldn't tell them the truth. The police couldn't protect Elise from the kind of people Julian was connected to.
Sitting in the back of an ambulance wrapped in a shock blanket, Elise looked up at him with tear-filled eyes. "Why did you lie to them, Julian? Why didn't you tell them about Victoria?"
Julian flinched at the name. Victoria Sterling. His ex-fiancée, the heiress to the Sterling real estate empire, and a woman whose obsession bordered on psychotic. When Julian had broken their arranged engagement to be with Elise—a middle-class school teacher he had genuinely fallen in love with—Victoria had sworn to make him regret it.
"Because if I bring Victoria’s name into a police report without hard proof, her father’s lawyers will bury us," Julian whispered, gripping Elise’s hand tightly. "And Victoria will know we suspect her. We need to be smart about this."
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"She tried to melt my face off, Julian!" Elise sobbed, the reality of the trauma finally breaking her composure. "She tried to kill our daughter!"
"I know," Julian said, his voice dropping an octave, laced with a dangerous, lethal calm. He kissed her forehead, his eyes fixed on the acid burns on the pavement. "I promise you, Elise. I am going to end this. She will never get near you again."
