If you want to be Silas’s wife, you take care of his mess, or you get back on the plane to Ohio.
I stood in the darkened mansion, the stench of neglect thick in the air. The faint glow of the candles I’d lit flickered against the peeling wallpaper.
Seven pairs of eyes watched me as I put the last loaf of bread on the table.
Eli, the oldest, still clutched the iron poker. His gaze was narrow, suspicious.
My phone felt heavy in my hand. I had to call for help.
I stepped away, finding a quiet corner near what looked like a disconnected landline. My mobile phone, however, should have signal.
I pressed the emergency number.
Nothing. Just dead air. The signal bars on my screen showed a full five bars, but the call wouldn’t connect. Not even a faint crackle.
A cold dread spread through me. It wasn’t just neglected children; it was an isolation chamber.
“The lines are cut,” Eli said from the doorway. He hadn’t moved. His voice was flat, devoid of surprise.
“All of them?” I asked, looking at the dead landline.
“Victoria had it done last week,” he said. “The studio handles all communications now. Nothing gets in or out without her say.”
I walked to the massive front doors. They were solid oak, with heavy iron fittings. The key Victoria gave me earlier had opened the smaller side gate.
These were locked from the inside.
I peered through the dusty peep-hole. Beyond the manicured but overgrown garden, the main security gates stood like an iron wall, gleaming under the pale moonlight.
They were sealed. From the outside.
Eli walked up beside me, his lean frame rigid. “Silas isn’t just ‘away for a few days,’ is he?” I asked, my voice barely a whisper.
He shook his head slowly. “He’s at the ‘wellness facility’ in Catalina.”
My stomach clenched. “Wellness facility? What happened?”
“Victoria said he had a nervous breakdown,” Eli spat, the words dripping with contempt. “A ‘psychological incident’ that required immediate, involuntary treatment.”
“But that’s…”
“A lie,” he finished for me. “She does it every time he tries to break free. She tells the public he’s on ‘location’ or ‘resting,’ but she sends him away until he’s ‘cooperative’ again.”
His words painted a grim picture of Silas: not a willing participant in this charade, but another prisoner.
A sudden rumble startled us. Headlights pierced the darkness beyond the gates. A sleek black SUV pulled up to the perimeter.
Two hulking figures in dark suits stepped out. They didn’t even glance at the children pressing against the windows.
One of them approached the gate and slipped a folded document through the bars. It landed with a soft rustle on the gravel driveway.
Then, without a word, they got back into the SUV and drove away, leaving us in the silence once more.
I walked to the gate, my heart pounding, and retrieved the paper. It was a formal legal notice.
My name, Norah Bennett, was printed clearly at the top. Below it, in harsh, legal jargon, it stated that I was on private property owned by Finch Entertainment.
Any continued presence, it warned, would be considered felony trespassing.
A threat. A direct, cold-blooded threat, delivered in the dead of night.
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