Chapter 4 - Three Seconds of Darkness
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“Lock the doors.”
Dominic’s order came before anyone could move.
The main doors closed.
Two members of the estate security team stepped in front of them.
Marcella exploded.
“You don’t get to imprison people!”
“Nobody’s imprisoned.”
Dominic looked around the room.
“They’re waiting.”
“For what?”
“For my mother’s chair.”
His head of security, Thomas Bennett, approached.
Thomas had worked at the estate for eight years.
Former military.
Always calm.
Always reliable.
Tonight, he looked pale.
“The chair may have been moved during the outage.”
Dominic stared at him.
“You think?”
Thomas ignored the sarcasm.
“We had a power interruption in the west corridor.”
“For three seconds?”
“Yes.”
“And during those three seconds, someone rolled a sixty-pound mahogany chair out of a crowded dining room?”
Thomas said nothing.
Dominic stepped closer.
“Show me the cameras.”
Marcella scoffed.
“You’re turning dinner into a police investigation.”
Dominic looked at his mother’s cheek.
“It became an investigation when you put your hands on her.”
Marcella’s eyes narrowed.
Evelyn quietly sat in another chair.
She looked smaller there.
Dominic hated that.
Not because of the furniture.
Because Marcella had wanted exactly that image.
Evelyn removed.
Replaced.
Moved aside.
Dominic followed Thomas into the security room.
Marcella tried to follow.
Dominic stopped at the doorway.
“Not you.”
She smiled coldly.
“You’re making a mistake.”
“Wouldn’t be my first.”
The door closed.
A wall of monitors filled the room.
Thomas pulled up the dining-hall footage.
10:31:02.
Evelyn pointed toward the chair.
10:31:04.
The lights failed.
10:31:07.
Emergency lights activated.
No chair.
Dominic leaned toward the screen.
“Back up.”
Thomas did.
Again.
The footage was identical.
Then Dominic noticed something.
During the blackout, the timestamp skipped.
10:31:04.
Then 10:31:11.
Not seven seconds of darkness.
Seven seconds missing.
“Why?”
Thomas stared at the monitor.
“System lag.”
Dominic looked at him.
“Seven seconds?”
“It happens.”
“Not in my house.”
Thomas’s jaw tightened.
Dominic opened the access log.
Someone had manually entered the system at 10:29.
Administrator credentials.
“Whose login?”
Thomas didn’t answer.
Dominic looked at the username.
TBENNETT.
The room went silent.
Thomas slowly lifted both hands.
“I didn’t do it.”
“Someone used your account.”
“Yes.”
“Who has your password?”
“No one.”
Dominic stepped back.
Thomas looked genuinely frightened now.
“I swear to you, Dominic.”
Before Dominic could answer, a sound came from the hallway.
A crash.
Then Evelyn shouted his name.
Dominic ran.
He reached the dining room and found his mother standing beside the table.
At her feet lay a broken wooden panel.
It had apparently fallen from the underside of a serving cart.
Inside was a narrow hidden compartment.
Empty.
Marcella stared at it.
Evelyn whispered, “That compartment used to be inside my chair.”
Dominic looked at Marcella.
“What was in it?”
Evelyn’s answer was almost inaudible.
“A key.”
May you like
👉 The missing chair had only been a hiding place — and now Dominic knew someone had already found the key his mother had protected for nearly thirty years.
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