Imprisoned by secrets

Epilogue

Twelve years ago...

17-year-old Beatrice Rivera walked briskly down the street like a woman with a purpose. Anyone who saw her that day would have thought she was a young girl on her way to an important meeting or an important errand.

Although her expression was cold and hard, she was very afraid.

Not just because her parents had just announced that she was going to marry Thomas whether she liked it or not.

Not just because she knew Thomas was somehow blackmailing her parents, from the hard and cruel way they had told her she was marrying him and the way Thomas kept smirking at her mother like he knew something she wouldn't want anyone to find out about.

Not just because she knew it would mean she would have to break up with Ethan because she didn't dare defy her parents and bring scandal to her family based on the dirt Thomas had on her parents which she didn't know about.

But because she could sense she was being followed by two men. Those men had been following her for over thirty minutes.

Beatrice had been walking in a street full of people and hadn't even looked back once but she knew she was being followed.

She could just sense it.

At first, she assumed they were kidnappers who wanted to get ransom money from her father. After a while, she realized they were her father's elite bodyguards.

She had stumbled upon them by accident and had been terrified of them because they were her father's aces.

They were specially trained men whose sole task was to gather information in the most discreet way possible. Hector Rivera used them for his shady businesses and they had never failed to get him the information he required.

If the men sensed that she knew they were following her, they would have aborted the mission and she wouldn't have found out why they were observing her. Beatrice decided to play along since she liked to know exactly what her enemies were planning so she could stop them before they could strike.

There were only possible two reasons those men were following her.

The first was that her father was afraid of her being abducted. This was unlikely because he hadn't even told her to be more cautious.

The second was that her parents had begun to suspect she was sneaking out to meet someone. They had discovered the secret passages a couple of days ago. She'd also made the mistake of showing her reluctance to marry Thomas thus causing them to suspect she had someone else in mind.

Her mother had been the one to mention her suspicion. Beatrice was sure they knew she was seeing someone secretly.

She didn't know how much they had figured out. She needed to act fast.

To be on the safe side, she kept walking briskly like she hadn't noticed she was being followed.

She felt the atmosphere change. They weren't tailing her anymore.

It meant one thing.

They knew where she was going so there was no need to keep following her there.

Her father had been quick enough to put all the pieces together. It seemed like he now knew where she was meeting Ethan.

She could feel their net closing in on her. She still had one more ace in the hole. Her hands didn't shake when she bought the tickets for Ethan and put down a false name.

She knew they would find out about what she had bought and for whom in seconds. The tickets were to throw her father off her track.

It was only a matter of time before her father would find out everything about Ethan—from his name to his family.