Chapter 7
The air in the hallway grew suffocatingly dense as Thomas's slow, methodical steps continued to advance. Chloe clutched Mark’s sleeve tighter, her fingernails digging through the cotton fabric until her knuckles ached.
"Why are you here?" Chloe demanded, her voice trembling with a mixture of raw terror and rising fury. "If you've been alive all this time, why come back now? What does this house have to do with you?"
Thomas stopped moving. In the heavy silence, the sound of his ragged, uneven breathing filled the corridor.
"This house isn't just a home, Chloe," Thomas said softly, a dark edge of warning in his tone. "It's a vault. And your father built it to bury a secret so massive that the entire local precinct has spent two decades running interference to keep it sealed."
Mark shifted slightly, his hand finally closing around the heavy brass candlestick on the hall table. "Whatever secrets you think are buried here, they died with your brother. Miller already locked down the official file."
"Miller is a pawn playing a losing game," Thomas snapped, his voice suddenly sharp and venomous. "She thinks she's protecting the department's pension funds and clean reputations. But she has no idea what your mother dug up from the backyard garden this morning."
May you like
Chloe’s breath caught. "The garden? My mother was digging near the old oak tree before the fight started."
Thomas chuckled darkly. "She wasn't planting azaleas, niece. She was unearthing the dispatch logs from the night your father died—logs that prove Officer Miller wasn't just a responding officer back then. She was the one who pulled the trigger."
