Chapter 4 - The Web in the Walls
I parked the Range Rover three streets over from my property, concealing it under the heavy foliage of a neighbor’s overgrown driveway. Wearing dark clothes and keeping low against the stone boundary walls of the Greenwich estates, I slipped through the woods at the rear of my six-acre lot.
The drizzle had turned into a steady, fog-heavy downpour. By the time I reached the back of our guest cottage, my jacket was soaked through, but I didn't feel the cold. The rage burning inside me kept my blood at a boiling point.
Marcus’s surveillance team had already gone to work remotely, tapping into the estate’s high-speed Wi-Fi grid and hijacking the security cameras I had installed years ago to monitor the perimeter. Now, those same cameras were streaming directly to the encrypted receiver in my pocket.
I checked my phone screen.
Camera 2 showed the front driveway. Wendy’s silver SUV had just pulled up to the main house.
I watched the live video feed as Wendy stepped out, opened the rear door, and lifted Fiona out. My daughter looked pale, her small head resting limply against her grandmother’s shoulder. Wendy looked around the driveway with a casual, practiced ease, entirely unbothered, before carrying Fiona inside through the side mudroom.
I gritted my teeth, squeezing my eyes shut for a brief second to control the violent surge of nausea. Hold it together, Julian, I told myself. If you lose your temper now, they win.
Using my master key card, I unlocked the side basement door of the main house—a subterranean entrance normally used by maintenance crews—and slipped inside without making a sound.
The basement was vast, finished with polished concrete floors, a wine cellar, and a home theater. I moved silently up the carpeted service stairs that led to the hidden pantry behind the kitchen.
Through the narrow gap in the wooden pantry door, I could hear voices.
"She’s just tired, Jessi," Wendy’s voice echoed off the kitchen’s Italian marble walls. "We went to the big playground near the water, and she ran herself ragged. Let her sleep in her room."
"She looks so pale, Mom," Jessi’s voice replied.
I pressed my face closer to the door frame, my heart catching in my throat. I watched my wife through the wooden slats. Jessi was sitting at the kitchen island, a mug of tea in her hands, her face etched with genuine, deep concern. She reached out and smoothed Fiona’s hair back from her pale forehead.
"Did she eat her lunch?" Jessi asked.
"She ate half a sandwich," Wendy lied smoothly, her tone utterly convincing. "You know how seven-year-olds are. Stop hovering, Jessi. You’re overparenting again. Julian is in Chicago building his empire, and you’re worrying yourself sick over a child who just needs a nap."
"I just... I have a bad feeling today, Mom," Jessi murmured, her voice laced with an unmistakable sorrow. "I had a dream about Richard last night. A awful dream. I woke up feeling like he was standing right beside my bed."
Wendy’s hand paused for a fraction of a second as she poured herself a cup of coffee. It was a subtle glitch in her demeanor, so fast only someone watching for it would ever notice.
"Dreams are just stress, Jessi," Wendy said coldly, setting the glass coffee pot down with a sharp clink. "Richard has been dead for eight years. You need to stop dragging his memory out every time you feel anxious. It’s unhealthful for Fiona to see you like this."
Watching from the dark pantry, my mind reeled.
The tone in Jessi’s voice was completely genuine. She wasn't acting. She didn't know Richard was alive. She didn't know her mother was harvesting her daughter’s blood. She was a victim of this sickening play just as much as Fiona was.
A massive weight lifted off my chest, instantly replaced by an even deeper horror: Jessi was innocent, which meant Wendy was manipulating her own daughter while systematically draining her granddaughter.
Wendy turned her back to Jessi and reached into her oversized designer purse, pulling out a small brown pill bottle. She shook two white tablets into her palm and dropped them into a glass of orange juice on the counter.
"Here," Wendy said, handing the glass to Jessi. "Drink your vitamins. You look exhausted."
My eyes widened in the darkness of the pantry. What was in those pills?
Was Wendy drugging my wife to keep her passive? To keep her compliant and too hazy to notice Fiona’s fading color and unexplained lethargy?
Before I could process the terrifying thought, my phone gave a silent, double-pulse vibration in my hand.
I pulled it up. It was a text from Marcus:
We just intercepted an encrypted radio signal originating from the warehouse near the docks. Richard isn't alone down there. He just received a delivery from a private courier vehicle registered to a research laboratory in Zurich. You need to see this data right now.
I cast one last glance through the pantry slats.
Jessi was drinking the orange juice, while Wendy stood over her with a cold, triumphant smile playing on her wrinkled lips. Fiona was being led upstairs like a quiet, obedient ghost.
May you like
I backed down the basement stairs, slipped out the rear door into the cold rain, and sprinted back through the woods toward the Range Rover.
The horror in my house was far bigger than a rogue family secret—it was an international operation, and the countdown on my daughter’s life was ticking faster than I ever could have imagined.
