Chapter 7 - THE HOUSE THAT BURNED
Ethan refused to let me go.
So I went anyway.
That shocked him.
What shocked me more was that after thirty seconds of arguing, he stopped trying to order me around.
“Fine.”
“Fine?”
“You’re going.”
“Yes.”
“With me.”
I stared at him.
“Why?”
His expression was unreadable.
“Because if someone wants you there, you’re not walking in alone.”
We left before sunrise with Brian and six guards.
The lake house was no longer a house.
Only part of the stone foundation remained beneath snow and dead grass.
I had not been there since childhood.
Every step brought back fragments.
My mother laughing on the dock.
My father grilling steaks.
Thomas smoking behind the garage.
Victor standing beside a black sedan.
Then I remembered something else.
A swing.
Not a child’s swing.
A wooden bench suspended from chains behind the house.
I walked toward the trees.
Ethan followed.
“What?”
“There used to be a bench.”
We found the posts.
Rotting wood.
Rust.
One chain still attached.
Beneath it, the ground looked uneven.
Brian brought a shovel.
After ten minutes, metal struck metal.
A small lockbox emerged from the frozen soil.
My hands started shaking.
It was not the black box.
This one was gray.
Old.
Inside was a photograph of my mother.
A cassette tape.
And a key.
Silver.
I recognized it instantly.
“My key.”
The one my father had given me.
Except now I wasn’t sure he had.
Ethan picked up the photograph.
My mother stood beside a younger version of my father.
Behind them was another man.
Victor Russo.
On the back, my mother had written:
IF JANE FINDS THIS, THOMAS FAILED.
Nobody spoke.
My stomach turned.
That sentence meant my mother knew Thomas was involved.
The cassette tape was labeled:
FOR MY DAUGHTER.
We found an old player at a gas station twenty miles away.
Ethan refused to play it until we returned to the car.
When my mother’s voice came through the tiny speaker, I stopped breathing.
“Jane, if you’re hearing this, then something happened to me.”
My eyes filled instantly.
“I’m sorry for every lie I had to tell you. Your uncle Thomas knows where the evidence is hidden. But he is afraid, and fear makes people dangerous.”
Static.
Then:
“Do not trust anyone who tells you the black box matters most. It doesn’t.”
I looked at Ethan.
“What does that mean?”
The tape continued.
“The box is bait. The real evidence was hidden somewhere only you would remember.”
My pulse quickened.
Then my mother said:
“You called it the castle.”
The tape clicked off.
I stared at the player.
The castle.
A memory surfaced.
Not a building.
A game.
A wooden dollhouse my grandfather had built for me.
Four stories high.
Painted white.
A miniature castle.
I had not seen it in years.
Then I remembered exactly where it was.
May you like
My father’s house.
In the attic.
