Chapter 13 - The Fire in the Nursery
Arthur didn't wait another second. He stepped through the doorway, his boots slamming against the wooden floorboards with a sharp report that echoed off the peeling wallpaper of the nursery.
“It ends right here, Sarah!” Arthur shouted, his voice ringing with years of pent-up rage and betrayal.
Sarah didn't flinch. She slowly stopped turning the pages of the open folder in her hands, looking up at him with cold, unblinking eyes that showed no trace of the loving wife he thought he knew. Thomas, however, reacted instantly, swinging the heavy iron crowbar off his shoulder and stepping into a defensive stance between Arthur and the burning trash can.
“You really don't know when to quit, do you, Arthur?” Sarah said, her voice smooth and devoid of emotion as she stood up from the wooden table. “You were supposed to stay at the house and let the police handle your little psychiatric breakdown.”
“You lied about everything,” Arthur snarled, taking a slow step forward while keeping Lily safely braced against his chest. Lily stirred in her sleep, whimpering softly and pressing her stuffed plush bunny tighter to her face. “The marriage, the adoption, the clinic. None of it was real!”
“Of course it wasn't real,” Thomas scoffed, sneering as he hefted the crowbar in his grip. “Arthur, you were a placeholder. A clean background, a respectable suburban facade to mask the shell corporation we used to siphon the trust funds out of this estate ten years ago. The only mistake we made was letting Sarah keep the kid as leverage.”
Elena stepped out from the shadows behind Arthur, her face twisted in fury. “You didn't just steal the money, Thomas. You killed our parents to get it, and you tried to pin it on me!”
Sarah laughed—a cold, brittle sound that sent a chill down Arthur’s spine. She reached down to the open folder on the table, pulled out a single, heavily stained photograph, and tossed it into the burning metal trash can right in front of them.
“They were standing in the way of the corporate restructuring,” Sarah said casually, as if discussing the weather. “Just like you are right now.”
Arthur watched the photograph catch fire, the flames licking at the edges of an image showing a young couple holding a newborn baby—a baby who looked remarkably like Lily, but with entirely different birth certificates tucked behind the frame.
Before Thomas could swing the crowbar, Elena lunged forward, tackling her brother hard against the peeling drywall. The men crashed to the floor in a tangle of limbs, sending the burning trash can tipping sideways across the wooden boards.
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Sparks showered instantly over the dry, dust-covered curtains framing the nursery window. Within seconds, a tongue of bright orange flame leaped up the fabric, igniting the room in a furious, blinding wall of fire.
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