Chapter 4 - Broken Bloodlines
The living room seemed to shrink, the walls closing in as the heavy silence stretched between the three adults. Mark stood frozen by the makeshift barricade of the coffee table, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned blue. Sarah clutched Lily tighter, the child's breathing hot against her collarbone.
"Little brother?" Sarah repeated, her gaze snapping from the dirty stranger on the floor to Mark's rigid back. "Mark, what is he talking about? You said you were an only child."
"I am an only child," Mark forced out, his voice unnaturally stiff. "He's lying. He's crazy, Sarah. Look at him, he's a vagrant who crawled up from the crawlspace."
"Vagrant?" The man in the hole let out a dry, hacking laugh that ended in a wet cough. "Twenty years, Mark. Twenty years you left me down in the dark while you took my name, my inheritance, and my bride."
"Shut up!" Mark lunged forward, kicking the coffee table hard against the broken floorboards.
"Mark, stop it!" Sarah screamed, stepping further back into the hallway. "Stop lying to me! Who is this man?"
"His name is Thomas," the stranger rasped, pulling himself higher until his shoulders cleared the splintered wood, revealing a jagged, faded scar across his left collarbone. "Your husband's older twin brother. The one who supposedly vanished during a backpacking trip in the mountains."
Sarah stared at Mark, the pieces of a puzzle she never knew existed suddenly snapping together with terrifying clarity. The unexplained financial accounts, Mark's aversion to family photographs, the way he flinched whenever someone mentioned the old town upstate.
"Is this true?" Sarah asked, her voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper.
"Sarah, it's not what you think," Mark pleaded, turning around with desperation in his eyes. "He wasn't right in the head. He fell, he hurt himself, and I panicked..."
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"You didn't panic," Thomas interrupted, resting his bruised hands on the edge of the broken floor. "You pushed."
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