Chapter 6 - The House Where My Mother Disappeared
The old Carter estate had been abandoned for years.
My mother had told me it burned down before I was born.
But when we arrived, the house stood intact.
Broken windows.
Overgrown garden.
A locked iron gate.
I stared at it.
“I've never seen this place.”
Adrian looked at me.
“You've been here.”
“What?”
“When you were a child.”
“No.”
“You were six.”
Memories surfaced.
A red hallway.
A blue door.
My mother's perfume.
A man's voice.
Then fire.
I grabbed my head.
Adrian caught me.
“Easy.”
“I remember.”
He stared.
“What?”
“I remember the house.”
We entered.
The smell of dust filled the air.
In the basement, we found a hidden room.
Inside was a child's bedroom.
My childhood bedroom.
On the wall were drawings.
My name.
Evelyn.
Adrian's hands trembled.
“I never knew this existed.”
My mother had left boxes.
Letters.
Photographs.
A tape recorder.
I pressed play.
Her voice filled the room.
“Eve, if you are here, I'm sorry.”
I cried.
She explained that Daniel had used her husband to steal from the family.
When she discovered the truth, she tried to expose him.
He threatened me.
So she disappeared with me.
But Daniel found us.
That night, Adrian arrived.
He had been sent a message from Claire.
The fire was started because Daniel wanted the ledger.
Claire hid it.
Then came the final revelation.
The ledger was never the true evidence.
It was bait.
The real evidence was a coded file hidden beneath the foundation.
My mother had trusted Adrian to find it.
“Why didn't he?”
Because Daniel captured him.
I looked at Adrian.
“What?”
He shook his head.
“I don't remember.”
Claire's recording continued.
“If Adrian tells you he doesn't remember, believe him.”
A photograph slid out from the box.
Adrian unconscious.
Daniel standing over him.
My mother standing beside them.
And Lily.
As a child.
I stared.
“Lily was here?”
“She was six,” Adrian said.
“She saw everything.”
“That's why she helped me seven years ago.”
Another envelope.
Inside was a USB drive.
Ethan connected it to his laptop.
There were bank records.
Government records.
Secret photographs.
Enough to destroy Daniel.
But there was one problem.
Daniel knew.
The house suddenly went dark.
A voice came through the speakers.
“Hello, Evelyn.”
Daniel.
“Seven years ago, I thought Adrian would choose power over you.”
I looked around.
“You were wrong.”
Daniel laughed.
“No. I was early.”
The doors locked.
Smoke began filling the basement.
Adrian grabbed me.
“Upstairs.”
We ran.
Gunfire erupted.
Security returned fire.
Ethan found a side door.
We escaped into the garden.
A car drove away.
Daniel was gone.
But something had changed.
We had the evidence.
May you like
And Daniel had failed to kill us.
For the first time, he was losing.
