Chapter 10 - Where Amelia FellLily did not remember handing Ethan to Brooks.
She only remembered running.
Down the hallway.
Past the broken mobile.
Past servants who shouted for her to stop.
Toward the east stairwell where a gunshot still echoed in her skull.
When she reached the landing, the world narrowed into fragments.
Victor on one knee, one hand braced against the wall.
Blood on his sleeve.
Chase pinning a gray-haired man to the floor.
Serena pressed against the lower banister, white-faced and shaking.
Dr. Malcolm Reed lying near the wall, a pistol kicked out of reach.
Not Catherine.
Reed.
Victor looked up as Lily rushed toward him.
“I’m fine.”
“You’re bleeding.”
“Graze.”
“Victor—”
“I’m fine.”
He was not fine. But he was alive.
Lily’s knees almost gave out.
Serena stared at Reed with hatred.
“He was supposed to kill me,” she whispered. “Wasn’t he?”
Reed groaned beneath Chase’s knee.
Victor stood slowly, ignoring the blood running down his forearm.
“Catherine sent you.”
Reed closed his eyes.
“She has my son,” he said.
The words silenced the stairwell.
Victor stared at him.
Reed’s voice cracked. “My son has gambling debts. Catherine owns them. She said if I didn’t stop Serena from talking, he’d disappear.”
Serena laughed bitterly.
“There it is. Catherine always finds the weak bone.”
Victor crouched in front of Reed.
“You helped steal my daughter. You helped bury my wife. You came into my home with a gun.”
Reed trembled.
“I know.”
“Then you are going to help end this.”
Reed looked up.
“What do you want?”
“The death video.”
Reed swallowed. “Catherine keeps it in a private server off-site. But there’s a local access terminal.”
“Where?”
Reed’s eyes shifted toward the scorched east wing.
“Beneath the chapel.”
Serena’s face changed.
“You knew?”
Reed looked away.
Victor grabbed him by the collar.
“Beneath the chapel where?”
“There’s a crypt under the old family chapel. Your father converted part of it into a records vault. Catherine uses it for anything she wants buried.”
Lily remembered Chase saying Catherine had escaped through a tunnel under the chapel.
“She’s going there,” Lily said.
Victor turned toward the windows.
Across the lawn, the chapel stood untouched by fire, white stone glowing beneath the morning sun.
Serena whispered, “If she reaches the server, Amelia dies twice.”
Victor looked at Chase.
“Call the state police. Then call the FBI contact Brooks mentioned. I want federal witnesses on this property.”
Chase nodded.
Victor turned to Lily.
“Go back to the children.”
Lily lifted her chin.
“No.”
His eyes hardened. “This is not your fight.”
“It became my fight when Serena dragged Ethan across the floor and everyone expected me to stay quiet.”
Serena flinched at her own name.
Victor’s expression shifted.
He knew he should send her away.
He also knew she was right.
So he nodded once.
They crossed the lawn toward the chapel together: Victor, Lily, Chase, two guards, and Serena in handcuffs because she insisted she knew the lower passage.
The Hale family chapel had hosted weddings, funerals, baptisms, and carefully photographed grief. White roses still grew along its side walls. Its bell tower rose above the estate like a finger pointing at heaven, though Lily suspected heaven had stopped listening to the Hales years ago.
Inside, sunlight fell through stained glass, painting the aisle in red and blue.
Victor walked straight to the altar.
Serena stopped near the first pew.
“Not there.”
She nodded toward a marble statue of an angel.
“Her hand.”
Victor pressed the angel’s hand.
A section of floor opened behind the altar.
Stone stairs led down.
Cold air rose.
Lily shivered.
Serena looked at Victor.
“Catherine made me kneel here once,” she said. “Told me family secrets were holy things.”
Victor’s voice was flat.
“You believed her?”
Serena looked down.
“I wanted to belong somewhere expensive enough that no one could throw me away.”
For the first time, Lily saw not a monster but the making of one.
That did not forgive her.
It only made the tragedy wider.
They descended.
The crypt beneath the chapel was older than the mansion. Stone walls held plaques with Hale names carved in gold. At the far end, a steel door had been built into the ancient rock.
It stood open.
Victor moved faster.
Inside was not a crypt.
It was a command center.
Servers hummed behind glass. Filing cabinets lined the walls. Monitors showed live feeds from hidden cameras across the mansion: nursery, foyer, east wing, guesthouse, even the garden.
Lily’s stomach twisted.
They had all been watched.
At the main terminal sat Catherine Hale.
She wore black gloves now.
A progress bar glowed on the screen.
DELETING ARCHIVE: 73%
Victor raised his weapon.
“Step away.”
Catherine did not turn.
“I wondered how long it would take you.”
“Step away from the terminal.”
“Or what?” Catherine asked. “You’ll shoot the woman who raised you?”
Victor’s hand did not tremble.
“The woman who raised me died long before today.”
Catherine finally turned.
Her face was calm, but her eyes were fever-bright.
“You think Amelia loved you?” she said. “She loved your softness. Your weakness. She would have given everything away.”
“She gave me children.”
“She gave the board leverage over my life.”
Victor took a step.
Catherine pressed one key.
The progress bar jumped to 91%.
Lily saw Serena tense.
Then Evie’s voice came from the monitor speakers.
“Mommy said red means stop.”
Everyone froze.
One of the monitors showed the guesthouse.
Evie stood near the sofa, staring directly into a hidden camera.
Beside her, Ethan held the red box.
Brooks was nowhere in frame.
Lily’s heart stopped.
Catherine smiled.
“I told you,” she said softly. “The mansion has more ghosts than you know.”
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On the monitor, the guesthouse door opened behind the children.
A man in a guard’s uniform stepped inside.
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