I saw my own husband and my friend together at my country house, but Vanessa’s smile vanished the moment she heard me arrive.

 

Here is the English translation of Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3:

Part 1

The gunshot echoed just as I was still struggling to believe that my husband had stepped out of my best friend’s car. Three minutes earlier, I was holding a birthday cake in my hands, thinking how happy Vanessa would be by my unexpected visit.

I had been driving for two hours from the city to her country house. On the way, I stopped by a small bakery and had her name written on the cake in chocolate letters. Beside it sat a bottle of champagne tied with a silver ribbon. Vanessa always said she found surprises childish, yet every birthday her eyes would sparkle all the same.

I parked my car behind the stone wall. The yard was quiet at first, save for the old garden bell swaying in the wind, clinking against its iron ring. I picked up the cake, left the champagne on the seat, and looked toward the gate.

At that exact second, a black car pulled in.

I recognized it immediately. It was my husband’s car.

Vanessa stepped out first. She wore a silk dress—the kind she never wore when we went shopping together. Then Ethan appeared from the other side of the car. He locked the door, wrapped his arm around Vanessa’s waist, and smiled at her as if an entire life existed between them, while I was merely a casual acquaintance.

The cake nearly slipped from my hands.

— “Ethan was supposed to be in Chicago,” I whispered to myself, barely recognizing my own voice.

Vanessa threw her head back and laughed. Her laughter reached all the way to the house. Ethan was saying something softly, then both headed toward the door.

I took one step forward to call out to them.

On the second step, I froze.

Vanessa suddenly looked across the yard. The smile vanished from her face. She grabbed Ethan’s arm and said softly:

— “Everything must be perfect today. Claire must not sign before she suspects anything.”

My name sliced through the air like a knife.

I found the side door next to the greenhouse open. I bolted inside and hid among the plants. The smell of damp soil, mint, and aged wood mingled together. The kitchen windows were open, and their voices carried straight to me.

— “The medical report is ready,” Vanessa said. “As soon as she signs the power of attorney, the board will believe she’s mentally unstable. Then her shares will be in your hands, too.”

Ethan replied, but so softly I couldn’t catch the words.

— “Don’t lose your nerve,” Vanessa chuckled. “Lucas lost his, and look where he ended up.”

My brother had died on the road eight months ago. Everyone considered it an accident. Everyone except me. I simply couldn’t accept that Lucas, who never forgot to wear his seatbelt, had suddenly plunged into a ravine.

I turned on my phone and started recording. My hands trembled on the screen. Catching my reflection in the greenhouse glass, I realized I was no longer crying. Even fear seemed to have turned to ice.

— “What about the brakes?” Ethan asked.

— “Everything is taken care of,” Vanessa replied. “Claire won’t make it to Monday’s board meeting.”

My car was parked right outside the yard.

Just then, my phone lit up again.

A text message arrived from Ethan’s number: “Don’t return home. You’re in danger. Trust no one, not even me.”

I stared at his back as he stood by the kitchen window. Ethan wasn’t holding a phone.

Someone else was sending me a warning.

Behind me, a floorboard creaked.

A broad-shouldered man stood at the greenhouse door. He wore a gardener’s jacket, holding a wet rag in one hand and a pistol in the other. A sharp, chemical odor drifted from the rag.

— “Mrs. Hale,” he said calmly, “you shouldn’t plan on arriving so early.”

I grabbed a clay pot and threw it with all my strength. It struck his shoulder and shattered. I bolted, but tripped over the plant tables. Soil spilled across the floor, and ceramic pots tumbled down one after another.

The man grabbed my hair.

— “Let me go!” I screamed.

He yanked me back. Right then, the greenhouse door burst open.

Ethan stood on the threshold, pale, holding a gun raised with both hands.

— “Claire, get down!” he yelled.

I looked into his eyes. There was fear there, but I couldn’t tell who he was afraid of.

His finger pressed the trigger, and I only had time to think one thing: this shot was about to reveal everything…

Part 2

The bullet passed through the shoulder of the man holding my hair, and I collapsed onto the pile of pots. His grip loosened instantly. A dark drop of blood fell to the floor, splattering among the clay shards.

Ethan fired a second time, this time toward the ceiling. The glass roof rattled.

— “Run, Claire!” he shouted at me.

— “Should I run from you or from him?” I asked, but didn’t wait for an answer. He grabbed my wrist and dragged me toward the rear exit of the greenhouse.

Right then, iron shutters slammed down over every window simultaneously. The sound of an external lockdown echoed. The lights turned red, and the greenhouse suddenly looked like a blood-colored room.

Vanessa’s voice poured down from the ceiling speaker, calm and cheerful.

— “You were always terrible at planning surprises, Claire.”

— “Where is she?” I screamed at Ethan.

— “Standing right beside you. Ask him how long he’s been lying to you.”

Ethan yanked open a narrow door that led down into the cellar beneath the house. We ran down the stone steps as heavy footsteps echoed above.

We entered the wine cellar. Dusty bottles lined the shelves, and the air smelled of damp stone and rotting apples. I pushed Ethan’s hand away and backed against the wall.

— “Were you having an affair with Vanessa?” I asked.

— “No.”

— “Were you planning to take over my company?”

— “No.”

— “Did she kill Lucas?”

Ethan lowered his eyes.

His silence weighed heavier than an answer.

— “Tell me!” I screamed.

— “Lucas found money disappearing through three shell companies. Two days before the crash, he sent me copies of the wire transfers. I started investigating and found Vanessa’s name on a trust fund.”

— “Why didn’t you go to the police?”

— “I did. Or I tried to. She sent me photos—of your car, your office, your bedroom. You were sleeping that night, and someone was photographing you through the window.”

Coldness flooded my stomach.

— “Is that why you lied to me?”

— “I wanted her to believe I had turned against you and joined her. If she saw an ally in me, she would reveal her plan.”

— “The plan to kill me?”

Ethan offered no answer.

He explained the text message: he had planted a hidden device in the car that would activate if the vehicle entered Vanessa’s estate. As for the brakes, they had already been tampered with once, but he had checked the car beforehand so I wouldn’t notice anything.

Then Ethan told me something even heavier.

— “Before I met you, I was married to Vanessa.”

The small clock in the cellar ticked past midnight.

— “What are you saying?”

— “We were twenty-four. The marriage lasted only eleven weeks. She told me the divorce was finalized. Years later, I discovered she never filed the papers.”

I backed away.

— “So our marriage might not even be legal?”

— “It might not be.”

From above, Vanessa chuckled.

— “Tell her the rest, Ethan. Tell her why Lucas trusted you.”

Ethan closed his eyes.

— “Seven years ago, when I was an assistant accountant, I signed off on a fake audit for Vanessa. I thought we were covering a temporary loan. In reality, it was the first shell company. My signature protected her entire scheme.”

A projector flickered onto the cellar wall. Lucas appeared on the screen. His face was bruised, and dried blood caked his lip. He was standing in that very room.

— “If Claire sees this, know that Vanessa is behind everything,” he said in the recording. “But Ethan started it. Don’t trust him.”

The recording cut off.

A mechanical lock sealed the door. A sweet, suffocating odor drifted down from the ceiling ventilation.

Ethan covered his face with his shirt and searched for an exit among the shelves. I walked over to an old workbench. A red folder sat on it, bearing my name.

Inside was a signed confession made out in my name—as if I had planned my own suicide—along with a falsified medical report and a photograph taken that morning.

In the photo, Ethan lay beneath my car, cutting a brake line.

My fingers gripped the photo.

— “This is you,” I said.

Ethan buried his face in his hands.

Just then, a small card peeked out from beneath the folder. It bore a single sentence: “If Claire finds this, ask her whose signature this is.”

I was still reading when a phone hidden inside the cellar wall rang. Ethan didn’t pick up.

Lucas’s name was flashing on the screen.

My brother had died eight months ago.

Yet the call kept ringing…

Part 3

The ringtone echoed through the cellar as if a dead man were calling us from the other side of the stone wall. Ethan stared at the phone, while I grabbed his arm.

— “Answer it.”

— “It could be Vanessa’s trick.”

— “If you don’t answer, you’ll spend the rest of your life wondering if it was Lucas.”

Ethan pressed the green button. For a few seconds, only breathing could be heard. Then a man’s voice sounded, low and strained.

— “Claire, if that’s you, don’t tell Ethan I’m still alive.”

The phone slipped from my hand.

— “Lucas?!”

— “We don’t have time,” he said. “There’s a memory card in the right pocket of the folder. Plug it into the projector and play the last audio file.”

Ethan found the card. His fingers trembled so violently he failed twice to insert it into the device. On the third try, the room lit up again.

In the recording, Vanessa’s voice sounded first.

— “Claire will sign. There are already enough falsehoods in her medical history for the board to believe it. Ethan will appear not as her husband, but as a traitorous guardian. Once Claire is dead, her shares will pass to you.”

Then Ethan’s voice followed.

— “I’ll touch the brakes, but only so the car stops on the road. I can’t kill her.”

— “You already killed her when you signed for me,” Vanessa replied. “Lucas started the same way.”

The recording shifted. Lucas’s voice came through.

— “Ethan initially hid my letters to buy time to negotiate with Vanessa. But when he realized they were planning a murder, he tried to escape with me. Vanessa’s people caught us on the road. I fell from the car into the river. They assumed I was dead.”

Ethan leaned against the wall.

— “Why didn’t you tell me you were alive?” I asked into the phone.

— “Because Vanessa had cameras installed even in your house. Today was the first time I managed to breach her system. I was the one who sent you the warning.”

A heavy weight lifted from my heart. Ethan was far from innocent, but he was no longer the monster depicted in that photograph.

— “You really were cutting the line,” I told him.

— “Yes. I was cutting the power steering line, not the brakes. The car would slow down and couldn’t move fast. The photo was taken from an angle where you couldn’t tell the difference. Vanessa used that frame to make me believe in my signed confession.”

A heavy thud echoed from the greenhouse above. Someone was breaching the door.

Over the phone, Lucas said:

— “There’s an underground passage behind the left shelf. The police will be there in ten minutes, but Vanessa has one final move left. She has already transferred the company accounts under your name.”

— “How?”

— “Using the power of attorney you haven’t signed yet.”

Ethan flipped open the red folder. My signature appeared on the final page.

I examined the page closely and realized instantly that something was off. At the end of my signature, I always added a tiny loop—because Lucas used to tease me as a child, saying the tail of the letter looked like a dragon. This signature lacked that loop.

— “This isn’t my signature,” I said.

— “I know,” Lucas answered. “But Vanessa has already executed it. The bank approved the transfer.”

Vanessa’s voice called out from outside the door.

— “Claire, if you come out now, I’ll leave Ethan alive. If not, you’ll lose both.”

Ethan looked at me.

— “You decide this time.”

Behind the left shelf, I discovered a narrow door. Before I stepped through, the phone rang again. It wasn’t the police this time. The bank attorney’s number flashed on the screen.

He told me a single sentence:

— “Mrs. Hale, all activity across your accounts has been frozen, as the company has received official notification of your death…”