PART 2: “MOMMY SAID NOT TO TELL YOU WHAT GRANDPA DOES IN THE BASEMENT…”
My fingers stopped working.
The paper shook violently in my hands as I stared at Lily’s uneven handwriting.
MOMMY SAID NOT TO TELL YOU WHAT GRANDPA DOES IN THE BASEMENT.
For one second, my brain refused to understand the sentence.
Then understanding came all at once.
Hard.
Violent.
Suffocating.
I looked through the hospital room window at my daughter curled beneath the blanket with IV tubes taped to her tiny arm.
Five years old.
Five.
And somehow she had run nearly three miles barefoot through freezing darkness because whatever waited inside Robert Sterling’s estate had terrified her more than the cold.
Chloe grabbed my arm.
“Marcus…”
But I barely heard her.
Because suddenly every strange thing from the last year started rearranging itself inside my head like puzzle pieces sliding into place.
My wife insisting Lily spend weekends alone at her father’s estate.
Robert demanding private family dinners where staff mysteriously disappeared early.
The way Lily sometimes screamed if I touched her ankles unexpectedly.
The nightmares.
The sudden bedwetting.
The panic attacks anytime someone mentioned basements.
Dear God.
I had missed it.
I had missed all of it.
—
“Where’s Olivia?” I asked.
My wife’s name felt poisonous now.
Chloe’s expression darkened.
“She finally answered me an hour ago.”
“And?”
