Chapter 10 - The Twin’s Shadow
The boy beside her wasn't a terrified high school student caught in the crossfire. As the realization hit her, the teenager slowly lowered the ledger, a chilling, dead calm replacing the frantic panic in his eyes. He reached up, casually peeling away a strip of artificial silicone scar makeup from his cheek, revealing smooth, unblemished skin underneath. "Surprised, Maya?" he asked, his voice dropping an octave to a familiar, chilling register that didn't belong to a teenager at all. It belonged to the man in the photograph, the man her parents had sworn was dead. He was younger than Arthur, but the resemblance was terrifyingly absolute.
"I’m Leo," the young man said softly, shifting his weight in the mud and casually leveling a suppressed pistol straight at Maya’s chest. The weapon had appeared from his jacket lining with terrifying fluidity. "Arthur’s real son. The one he tried to erase when he stole my mother’s estate and paid off Vance to burn down our family home with me inside it." Maya froze, her hand hovering uselessly over the revolver in her waistband. Every piece of the puzzle shattered and rearranged itself into a nightmare of unimaginable betrayal. Her parents hadn't lent her the car to help her; they had sent her straight into a familial blood feud, using her as bait to draw Leo out of hiding.
Outside the timber mill, the heavy crunch of gravel signaled Vance approaching the broken entrance. But before Vance could step through the gap, a blinding wall of headlights flooded the open doorway of the mill. A familiar vehicle roared up to the perimeter—her father’s sedan, driven not by a stranger, but by Evelyn, her mother. The car slammed to a halt right across the entrance, blocking Vance’s escape. Evelyn stepped out into the moonlight, her expression completely devoid of the maternal warmth Maya had known her entire life. In her hands, she held a heavy double-barreled shotgun, cocking both hammers with a loud, metallic snap that echoed through the hollow ruins.
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"Put the gun down, Leo," Evelyn’s voice rang out, cold as winter ice, cutting through the damp mill air as she leveled the twin barrels directly at the man standing two feet away from her daughter. "You took everything once. You won't take my family twice."
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