Chapter 6 — The Brother Who Escaped
Chapter 6 — The Brother Who Escaped
Sirens approached in the distance.
Nathan pulled Grace from the wrecked SUV.
“We have to move.”
“My mother is hurt.”
“She’ll be safer with the paramedics.”
“What if the police work for Nicholas?”
Nathan looked toward the dark street.
“Then none of us are safe.”
Grace crouched beside Margaret.
Her mother’s eyes opened briefly.
“The estate,” she whispered. “Go before Nicholas reaches the vault.”
Grace squeezed her hand.
“I just got you back.”
“You’ll lose everything if he destroys that footage.”
Nathan helped Grace into a passing taxi. They left Margaret behind as emergency vehicles arrived.
During the ride, Grace watched Nathan in silence.
He noticed.
“You think I killed my father.”
“I don’t know what to think.”
“You should question me.”
“That is the first honest thing anyone has said tonight.”
Nathan looked out the window.
“I hated him.”
Grace waited.
“He controlled Nicholas and me. Compared us constantly. Punished one brother for the other’s mistakes.”
“Did you lock him inside the lake house?”
“No.”
“But you were there.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
Nathan closed his eyes.
“Our father planned to send Nicholas to one of Shaw’s clinics. Nicholas begged me to help him escape.”
Grace felt a knot tightening in her stomach.
“I arrived after the fire started. I heard my father screaming. I tried to break the door down.”
“And Nicholas?”
“Gone.”
At the Cole estate, the iron gates were already open.
The mansion stood dark against the night sky.
Nathan led Grace through a side entrance using a code only he knew.
They entered the library.
A portrait of Alexander Cole hung above the fireplace.
Grace stared at his painted face.
A memory surfaced.
Alexander shouting.
Nicholas holding a metal can.
Nathan pounding on the locked door.
Grace gripped the edge of a table.
“I remember gasoline.”
Nathan turned.
“Who was holding it?”
“I can’t see his face.”
A floorboard creaked upstairs.
They were not alone.
Nathan opened a hidden panel behind the portrait. A keypad glowed inside.
He entered six numbers.
The wall slid aside, revealing a steel staircase.
They descended into a private archive filled with servers and locked cabinets.
At the far end stood an empty chair.
The restraints attached to its arms were still warm.
Grace looked at Nathan.
“Someone was kept here.”
A television screen switched on by itself.
Nicholas appeared on the screen.
“Welcome home, brother.”
Nathan stepped forward.
“Where are you?”
“Close enough.”
The screen changed.
It showed Margaret inside an ambulance.
A man dressed as a paramedic injected something into her IV.
Grace screamed.
Nicholas’s voice filled the room.
“You chose the evidence over your mother.”
May you like
The ambulance doors closed.
The feed went black.
