Chapter 3 - Ghosts in the Machine
We locked ourselves in the upstairs study—a massive, oak-paneled room lined with leather-bound books and shadowed portraits of men who had ruled the city’s underworld before Sawyer took the throne.
The rain lashed violently against the reinforced glass windows, turning the night outside into a blur of ink and neon.
I sat at the mahogany desk, the small, cracked smartphone resting between us like an unexploded bomb. The screen was black, powered down to preserve what little battery life remained after five years of sitting undisturbed inside the belly of a children’s stuffed duck.
"How did it get there?" Sawyer asked, pacing the length of the study like a caged wolf, his hands clenched into fists at his sides. "Elena’s phone... I searched the entire house the night she died. The police searched it. The federal agents who leaned on me for months tore every floorboard up. They said she threw herself off the coastal cliff near the old lighthouse."
"They didn't search the nursery," I replied quietly, my fingers hovering over the power button. "Or more specifically, they didn't search Lily’s toys. Kids hide things when they're scared. When the world is falling apart around them, they put their most precious secrets inside the things that can't talk."
I pressed the power button.
For three agonizing seconds, nothing happened. Then, a faint white apple logo flickered to life on the cracked screen, casting an eerie glow across Sawyer’s grim, weathered face.
Battery: 14%.
"Open the video folder," Sawyer commanded, his voice dropping to a rough whisper as he stopped pacing and leaned heavily over the edge of the desk, his knuckles pressing hard against the wood.
I tapped the gallery icon. There were dozens of mundane photos—pictures of Lily as a toddler learning to walk, sunny afternoons in the courtyard garden, pictures of Elena smiling brightly into the camera with her dark hair blowing in the wind.
Then, I found the file labeled August 14 - Draft.
"This is the date," I whispered, my heart hammering against my ribs. "The night she supposedly jumped off the cliff."
I hit play.
The screen flickered. The camera angle was shaky, filmed in the dim, amber-lit hallway of the estate’s old cellar corridor—the exact hallway Lily had been drawing over and over.
Elena Voss appeared on the screen, her face pale, bruised around the jawline, her dark eyes wide with a frantic, animalistic terror. She wasn't looking at the camera; she was looking nervously over her shoulder, the sound of heavy footsteps echoing in the background.
“If you’re watching this,” Elena’s voice broke, trembling violently as she held the phone close to her face, “Marcus already lied. He told me the dossier was secure, but he sold us out to the federal task force. He’s been skimming the syndicate accounts for three years and framing Sawyer to take the fall.”
On the screen, Elena choked back a sob, wiping a tear from her cheek with a hand that wouldn't stop shaking.
“If I don't make it out of this house tonight... if they find me... tell Sawyer I never stopped loving him. But look in the red door. Look behind the brick wall in the old wine cellar. That’s where they keep the real books. That’s where Marcus hides—AGH!”
A loud crash echoed through the video recording. A hand—heavy, calloused, wearing a distinctive silver signet ring with a serpent crest—shot into the frame, grabbing Elena by the hair and violently wrenching her away from the camera.
The phone slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the stone floor, recording a final, horrifying thirty seconds of muffled screams, scuffling feet, and a cold, cruel voice murmuring, “It’s a shame, Elena. You could have had a comfortable seat at the new table.”
Then, darkness. The video cut off.
The study was dead silent.
Sawyer didn't move. He stood frozen over the desk, his massive frame trembling from head to toe. The color had completely drained from his face, leaving him looking like a corpse carved from stone.
"The signet ring," Sawyer whispered, his voice barely audible, vibrating with a rage so profound it felt tectonic. "The serpent crest."
"Whose ring is that?" I asked, my throat tight.
"Not Marcus’s," Sawyer said slowly, lifting his head to look at me, his eyes burning with a terrifying, cold fire. "Marcus is just a foot soldier. A glorified accountant with a gun. That ring belongs to Victor Vance. My oldest partner. The man who sat at my right hand for fifteen years... and the man who supposedly brokered the truce after Elena died."
The pieces clicked together in my mind with horrifying clarity.
"He didn't just kill your wife," I realized, the horror washing over me in waves. "He took your syndicate from the inside out, framed you for treason, and used Marcus to keep tabs on your house while making sure your daughter stayed mute out of sheer, unadulterated terror."
Sawyer didn't answer. He walked over to the mahogany liquor cabinet, pulled out a heavy crystal decanter of bourbon, and poured a generous measure into a tumbler. He didn't use ice. He threw the amber liquid back down his throat like water, slamming the glass down so hard the crystal cracked down the middle.
"For four years," Sawyer said, his voice dangerously low, every word clipped like a gunshot, "I blamed myself. I thought my enemies came for my wife because of my name. I thought I was the poison that killed her."
He turned around, his dark, dangerous eyes locking onto mine with an intensity that made it impossible to look away.
"And all this time, the knife was sitting at my own dining table."
Before I could respond, a frantic, high-pitched scratching sound echoed from the heavy oak door of the study.
Scratch. Scratch. Thump.
We both froze.
The door slowly swung inward on its oiled hinges. There, standing in the doorway, was the white pit bull.
His shoulder wound had been freshly stitched by me earlier that evening, but now he was bleeding again, dark crimson soaking through the white bandages. He was panting heavily, his eyes wild and wide, staring back down the dark hallway toward the grand staircase.
And behind him, holding her stuffed duck tightly to her chest, stood little Lily.
May you like
Her face was as white as paper. She wasn't looking at her father. She was staring past him, her small hand pointing down the dark corridor toward the private family wing.
"They're coming," the little girl whispered, her voice cutting through the silence like broken glass. "The men with the red eyes are in the house."
