Chapter 7 - THE PHOTOGRAPH
The heavy steel door didn’t budge. The smell of gasoline grew thicker, burning the back of my throat.
“Lily! Get back!”
Tristan’s voice came from the bottom of the stairs. He emerged from the shadows of the cellar, a heavy iron wine rack strut in his hands. He hadn’t been trapped upstairs—he had been thrown down here with me.
He shoved past me, swinging the iron bar at the door’s hinges. Sparks flew in the dark, but the reinforced steel held.
Smoke began to curl under the doorframe. The fire had started.
“We can’t go back up,” Tristan coughed, grabbing my hand. “There’s an old coal chute at the back of the cellar. Come on!”
We navigated the dark basement, the heat above us pressing down like a physical weight. At the far end of the cellar, near the ceiling, was a small, reinforced glass window leading to the yard.
Tristan swung the iron bar, but the thick glass only spider-webbed. He swung again, harder. The bar bent.
“It’s too thick,” he panted, coughing as the smoke began to fill the room.
I frantically searched my pockets, pulling out the heavy wooden rosary my mother had held.
“Use this,” I said, handing it to him.
Tristan wrapped the rosary around his fist, the heavy wooden cross acting like brass knuckles. He drove his fist into the center of the spider-webbed glass.
With a sickening crunch, the window shattered.
He hoisted me up, shoving me through the narrow opening. I scrambled onto the damp grass outside, gasping for fresh air. A second later, Tristan pulled himself through, just as a muted explosion rocked the foundation of the house. Flames shot through the first-floor windows.
We collapsed on the lawn, coughing violently.
When I finally caught my breath, I reached into my jacket and pulled out the envelope I had taken from the cashmere coat.
“Evelyn hid this,” I said, my hands shaking as I tore it open.
Inside was a single, faded photograph and a small brass key.
Tristan took the photo. We held it up to the light of the burning house.
It was a picture of my mother, taken over twenty-five years ago. She was young, smiling, wearing the silver dove bracelet. But she wasn’t standing next to Marcus.
She was standing next to Arthur.
And Arthur was holding a baby.
“Lily,” Tristan said, his voice completely hollow. He flipped the photo over.
Written in my mother’s neat handwriting were the words: Arthur and Lily. Her first birthday.
My world stopped spinning. It just dropped.
“Arthur is your father,” Tristan whispered.
I couldn’t speak. The man who had just tried to burn us alive, the man who had drugged me, the man who had run my mother down in the street... was my father?
“Why?” I sobbed, the betrayal ripping through me. “If I’m his daughter, why is he doing this to us?”
“Look at the key,” Tristan said grimly, picking it up from the grass. It had a bank logo stamped on it. “Evelyn kept his secrets in a safety deposit box. He didn’t run your mother over to silence her about Marcus. He ran her over to get to the key she was holding. He needs whatever is in that box to take over my company.”
Sirens wailed in the distance.
“We have to get to the bank,” Tristan said, pulling me to my feet. “Before he realizes Evelyn didn’t have the key on her.”
But my phone buzzed in my pocket. I pulled it out.
It was a text message from an unknown number.
Come to the downtown branch. Alone. Or I take your mother off life support myself.
May you like
Attached was a live video feed. Arthur was standing in my mother’s hospital room, his hand resting casually on her ventilator tube.
He knew exactly where we were going.
