Chapter 6 - THE HOUSE THAT BURNED TWICE
The ruins of the Russo estate had been abandoned for seventeen years.
Callum had never returned.
Until Sadie.
They arrived before dawn.
The house stood outside Lake Forest behind rusted gates and dead trees.
Sadie limped beside him.
“You should have stayed behind.”
“You’ve said that fourteen times.”
“Thirteen.”
“I counted.”
“You counted incorrectly.”
Sadie glanced at him.
“You’re insufferable.”
“And yet here you are.”
They found the basement staircase beneath collapsed timber.
Then the hidden level.
Sadie’s key opened the first lock.
Nora’s opened the second.
Inside was not a vault.
It was a nursery.
Callum stopped.
Children’s drawings covered the walls.
Dozens.
Sadie picked one up.
Two little girls holding hands.
Another showed a dark-haired boy beside them.
Names were written underneath.
SADIE.
NORA.
CALLUM.
Callum stared.
“We knew each other.”
Sadie looked at him.
Memory arrived in fragments.
A summer afternoon.
A little boy stealing peaches.
A girl laughing.
Callum remembered.
“You bit me.”
Sadie blinked.
“What?”
“You bit my arm.”
“I was nine.”
“You drew blood.”
“You stole my doll.”
“It was an ugly doll.”
Sadie stared at him.
Then laughed.
A real laugh.
In the ruins of everything their families had destroyed, Callum heard Sadie laugh for the first time.
He wanted to hear it again.
That realization frightened him more than the armed men who appeared behind them.
“Don’t move.”
Vincent Caruso stepped from the darkness.
Callum slowly turned.
The man who had raised him held a pistol.
“Vincent.”
Pain crossed the older man’s face.
“I hoped you’d never find this room.”
Callum’s voice became quiet.
“You killed my father?”
“No.”
“Then put down the gun.”
“I can’t.”
Sadie stepped closer to Callum.
Vincent noticed.
“So that’s how history repeats itself.”
“What does that mean?” Sadie asked.
“Vittorio loved your mother.”
Callum froze.
Thomas had claimed he loved Evelyn.
Vincent smiled sadly.
“Thomas lied about one thing before he died.”
Sadie whispered, “What?”
“Your father.”
She stared.
Vincent looked directly at Callum.
“Sadie isn’t Thomas Russo’s daughter.”
Silence.
“She’s Vittorio’s.”
Callum went completely still.
Sadie looked at him.
Then Vincent laughed.
“No. Don’t worry. Callum’s mother knew about the affair long before he was born.”
Callum almost shot him purely for allowing that horrifying misunderstanding to exist for three seconds.
Marco muttered from behind them, “That was unnecessarily dramatic.”
May you like
Then the lights went out.
Gunfire erupted.
