Chapter 43 - the second grave
A gunshot cracked through the lower floor, followed immediately by the sound of tearing wood and a scream of pain that belonged to Julian.
I thrust Lily into Clara's arms. "Lock the nursery door from the inside. Use the security bar behind the frame. If anyone tries to turn the handle who isn't me, you push the antique dresser against the jamb and climb out through the laundry chute into the basement cellar. Do you hear me?"
Clara gripped Lily against her chest, nodding frantically. "Marcus, please. Julian... he isn't who you think he is."
"I know who he is," I said, my voice dropping to a low, cold whisper. "I’ve known since the moment he lit that flame in the rain."
I picked up the intruder’s dropped tactical weapon from the floor, chambered a round with a clean, metallic snap, and stepped back into the hallway.
Down below, the foyer was submerged in shadows. The storm outside howled through the open skylight, driving sheets of rain across the family portraits that lined the walls. Lightning illuminated two figures tangled near the foot of the grandfather clock.
Julian was on his knees, pinned against the heavy mahogany base. Richard stood over him, blood pouring from a gash across his temple, but his face was twisted into a triumphant, psychotic snarl. In his left hand, Richard held the pink velvet purse, its seam already torn open, spilling torn slips of yellowed paper onto the wet floor. In his right hand, Richard held his silenced pistol pressed directly beneath Julian's chin.
"Did you really think four years of plastic surgery and a burnt face would hide your eyes, brother?" Richard sneered, cocking the hammer back. "I knew it was you the moment you walked into the boardroom in Zurich. You always walked with that slight drag on your left heel. A souvenir from the ski accident in Aspen when we were twelve."
My boots froze against the landing. My vision blurred for a fraction of a second.
Brother. Not Julian.
"Ethan?" The word left my throat before I could stop it. It was barely louder than a whisper, but in the cavernous, echoing foyer, it sounded like a thunderclap.
The scarred man on his knees looked up. Through the rain, through the swollen, burned tissue of his eyelids, those eyes met mine. They were the exact shade of hazel as the eyes staring back at me in the mirror every morning. The exact shade of the eyes of the little girl upstairs clutching her yellow rabbit.
"Marcus," he whispered, a mouthful of dark blood staining his teeth. "Don't come down. The floor beneath Richard is wired. He set the secondary charge before you breached the gate."
Richard chuckled, a dry, rattling laugh that made my spine turn to ice. "Clever boy, Ethan. Always so protective of your little brother. Just like that night in the boathouse four years ago. You thought if you burned that cabin to ash with a homeless man’s body inside, I’d stop looking. You thought you could vanish into the black market, buy a new face, and leave your daughter to be raised by a maid while you played the phantom guardian."
May you like
Richard pressed the gun barrel harder into Ethan’s jaw, forcing his head back against the wood.
"Look at him, Marcus!" Richard screamed up at the balcony. "Your beloved, heroic brother! He faked his death, watched you mourn for four years, watched you sink into a bottle and lose your sanity, all to protect his precious little trust fund from me! He left you with the ghosts!"
