Chapter 6 - The Fake Goodbye
“Someone opened her recording after the accident,” Naomi said. “They changed the ending.”
Adrian replayed the twelve seconds. The words sounded natural, but the final frame jumped almost invisibly. Evelyn had been speaking to someone outside the camera's view. A second voice had been removed.
“Can you recover it?” I asked.
“Maybe. Not from this copy alone.”
Naomi arranged for the drive to be analyzed in a secured lab. Meanwhile, Adrian suspended Holt from the estate and ordered an audit of every employee account. Marcus called six times before breakfast. Adrian ignored each call.
I expected to be fired. Instead, he offered to move me into the guest cottage while the threats were investigated. “That's not a promotion,” he said. “It's protection.”
“From your brother?”
“I don't know yet.”
I held my ground. “You do know enough to stop pretending this is a misunderstanding.”
He didn't argue.
That afternoon Sophie found me in the greenhouse. She had packed a tiny backpack with a toy rabbit, two crayons, and a photograph of her mother.
“Are we running away?” she asked.
“Not today.”
“Mommy used to say that before bad things happened.”
I crouched beside her. “What else did she tell you?”
Sophie looked toward the house. “That Uncle Marcus has two faces. One for Daddy. One when Daddy isn't watching.”
A car stopped beyond the greenhouse gate. Mrs. Bell hurried out, pale and breathless. “Olivia, a package came for you. No return address.”
Inside was my father's wristwatch, scratched across the glass. I recognized the uneven repair he'd made with a tiny brass screw. Beneath it was a photograph taken that morning: Sophie and me beside the greenhouse roses.
May you like
On the back, written in block capitals, were seven words.
LEAVE THE ESTATE OR HE DIES TONIGHT.
