Chapter 5
The rhythmic tink, tink, tink against the thick iron plate sent a freezing shiver straight down Clara’s spine. She dropped the yellow folder; it landed with a dull thud on the damp concrete, spilling a cascade of property tax receipts and old utility bills across the dusty floor. David backed away, pressing his back hard against the rough stone foundation wall, his breathing ragged and shallow.
"Who is that?" Clara demanded, her voice echoing in the confined basement space. She shone her phone light directly at the heavy padlock dangling from the newly welded latch. "David, who is down there?"
"You know who it is," Helena’s voice drifted down the stairwell, cold and detached. She and Julian appeared at the top of the stairs, their silhouettes blocking out the weak afternoon light from the kitchen above. "It’s the reason Mother never left this house. The reason she spent every cent she had paying off the silence of three different mayors."
Clara ignored them, dropping to her knees beside the spilled papers. Her fingers brushed against a small, leather-bound diary stamped with initials she hadn't seen since she was ten years old—E.V. Their mother’s journal. She flipped it open blindly, the pages brittle and yellowed. The beam of her phone illuminated frantic, looping handwriting dated three days before their mother's stroke.
They found the foundation map, the entry read. Julian is back. He knows about the second will. If Clara sells, the ledger comes to light.
Julian descended the stairs slowly, his leather shoes clicking against the concrete. He didn't look like a dead man anymore; he looked like an executioner. He bent down, picked up the leather diary from Clara’s lap with terrifying gentleness, and slipped it into his suit pocket.
"Mother tried to protect you by sending you away, Clara," Julian said softly. "She thought if you lived three states away, you’d be safe from what happened in this basement back in 1994."
"What happened?" Clara demanded, scrambling to her feet, her hands balled into fists. "Tell me!"
The tapping from behind the iron door stopped abruptly. Instead, a low, rasping voice spoke from the darkness of the root cellar, muffled by the steel and stone.
"Let me... out..."
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David slid down the stone wall, burying his face in his hands. "God help us," he groaned. "She’s been down there for eighteen months."
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