Chapter 2 - The Empty Casket
Marcus lunged forward, his massive hand gripping the back of the velvet sofa as his knuckles turned stark white. The festive lights of the Christmas tree cast dancing, multicolored shadows across his twisted, sweat-beaded face. He glared at Elena, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps that echoed loudly in the tense silence of the living room.
"Don't play your games with me, Elena," Marcus hissed, his voice trembling with a mixture of rage and sheer, unadulterated terror. "We put her in the ground. I carried the weight of that mahogany box myself. I watched the dirt fall over it. The death certificate is signed, sealed, and filed away."
Elena didn't flinch. She smoothed the front of her dark green velvet dress with agonizing slowness, her eyes locked onto Marcus’s panicked expression. "Paperwork can be bought, Marcus. And grief makes men very eager to believe what keeps them safe at night. You wanted the inheritance, you wanted the house, and most of all, you wanted the nightmare to end. So you let it end."
Ava sat frozen between them, her dark curly hair framing a face drained of all color. Her mind raced back over the last two years she had spent living in this sprawling, drafty house, working as an unpaid housekeeper under Elena's thumb. Every chore, every silent glare, every locked door suddenly took on a sickening, horrifying new context. She looked down at the sleek, modern laptop resting inside the cardboard box of cleaning supplies—the laptop that bore a state-of-the-art encryption key registered to a dead girl.
"If Nia is alive," Ava whispered, her voice barely audible over the crackling fireplace, "then who was in that grave?"
Marcus whipped his head around, his eyes locking onto Ava with a terrifying intensity that made her shrink back against the cushions. "Shut your mouth, girl! You don't know what you're meddling in. This is a sick hallucination, a cruel trick orchestrated by a bitter old woman who hates that she lost control of this family."
"Is it a trick, Marcus?" Elena stepped past him, her heels clicking sharply against the hardwood floor as she walked over to the mantlepiece. She picked up a heavy, silver-framed photograph of a smiling teenage girl with dark curly hair—a girl who looked startlingly like the reflection staring back from the dark windowpane. "Then explain why our accountant just transferred fifty thousand dollars to Ava’s newly activated student account this morning."
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Marcus froze. His jaw went slack, and the color drained completely from his dark skin, leaving him looking like a ghost in the warm Christmas glow.
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