Page 43

The door swung open with a creak that echoed through the main house like a gunshot. I stepped inside, rainwater streaming off my jacket, forming puddles on the polished marble floor. Their eyes, those of the wounded and the weary, clung to me like ivy. Hope wrestled with fear in their gazes, an unspoken plea hanging in the charged air.

"Marcus is dead," I said, cutting through the thick silence without warning.

A collective breath left the room as if the walls themselves exhaled. Heads bowed, shoulders dropped—an invisible weight seemed to lift, if only for a heartbeat.

"Dead?" The word rebounded off the high ceilings, a whisper amplified into a scream by someone's disbelief. It was my friend Amy.

"By his own hand," I confirmed. My voice didn't waver, though my legs threatened to buckle beneath me.

"Are you certain?" The question came from the back, timid yet demanding confirmation.

"Positive." There was no energy left in me for softness. "I saw him. He left us… a note."

"Jesus…" Someone else muttered—a prayer or a curse, I couldn't tell which.

"Is this over then?" Doubt laced the tentative inquiry.

"Far from it." I scanned their faces, each one a story marred by the night's grim revelations. "We've still got a killer among us."

A blur of motion broke from the crowd, and Olivia was at my side in an instant. Her arms wrapped around me with a fierceness that defied her slender frame, and for a brief moment, I let myself lean into her embrace. The warmth of her body seeped through my wet clothes.

"Mom," she said, her voice taut with barely contained emotion. My heart clenched at the sound, so full of worry and care.

She stepped back just enough to look at me, her eyes scanning my face as if trying to read the story etched in the lines of my weariness.

"Are you okay?"

I met her gaze and saw the flicker of pain that she couldn't hide, the bloody wound on her shoulder a stark reminder of the brutality she had faced. I wanted to offer her comfort, to be the pillar of strength she sought, but the truth weighed heavy on my tongue.

"No, Liv, I'm not," I admitted, my voice low, betraying the fatigue that pulled at my bones. Her eyes, so much like mine, filled with understanding—and something else, a resolve that matched my own.

"Talk to me, Mom," Olivia said, her gaze insistent, slicing through the layers of my resolve. "What happened out there?"

I exhaled, shoulders slumping as if the weight of the events could be shaken off. My hand dipped into my jacket pocket, fingers brushing against crumpled paper. Withdrawing the note, I felt its edges damp from the rain but no less significant.

"Marcus… he gave me this." My voice was a whisper, yet it carried, amplified by silence and gravity. “I read it as soon as he… died.”

Her eyes flickered with trepidation as I unfolded the note, every pair of eyes in the room drawn to the once-hidden words now laid bare for all to witness. I scanned the message quickly, each word etching itself into my memory, a loud echo of Marcus's voice.

The script was sharp, hurried—written by a man aware that time was slipping through his fingers. I read aloud, my voice steady despite the anger brewing within me,

"‘So many lies. So many lives hurt. It ends here.'"

Murmurs swelled around us, a crescendo of dread and curiosity that filled the spaces between our breaths. The note trembled slightly in my grip.

"What is it, Mom? What does it say?" Olivia pressed, her voice a beacon of urgency in the whispers.

The note's words echoed in my mind, a haunting refrain. I lifted my gaze, letting it sweep over the anxious faces before me. They blurred into a single tapestry of guilt and suspicion until my eyes landed on one figure—still, watchful—a shadow among shadows.

"Tell me," I began, my voice slicing through the hush. “When did you decide their lives were expendable? Isla, Mark, and, in the end, Marcus?"

The individual met my stare, unflinching. The room's air crackled, charged with the collective inhale of shocked breaths, waiting, expecting.

"Isla, Mark, Marcus—all dead because of what?”

Silence answered me, heavy and opaque. I stepped closer. "Speak."

No movement. No remorse flickered across the face, only a cold calculation that sent shivers down my spine.

"Three people," I pressed, every word etched with resolve. "Three lives taken. And for what? Why?"

Stillness enveloped the space as if the very walls leaned in to hear the confession that refused to come. I waited, my pulse thrumming a relentless rhythm against my temples.

"Answer me!"

The demand tore from my lips, raw and insistent. The room held its breath, the truth an elusive specter dancing just out of reach.

The room was a minefield of rapid heartbeats and shallow breaths, everyone anticipating the next move in a game where the stakes had never been higher. The person stood motionless, a statue among the living, shrouded in mystery and malice.

"Speak," I demanded once more.