Chapter 6 - The Empty Sofa
The blanket was still warm.
The office window was open.
Maya stood in the middle of the room, white with panic.
“I turned for one second,” she said. “I heard something in the hall. When I looked back—”
Julian ran to the window.
A narrow service roof stretched beneath it.
No blood. No broken tiles.
Then he saw a small shoe print in the dust.
Leo’s.
“Leo!”
No answer.
Police flooded the property.
Eleanor was placed in a patrol car, shouting that Julian was framing her.
Julian barely heard her.
He followed the shoe prints across the service roof to an old maintenance door.
Inside, a narrow staircase led down between the walls.
Maya stared. “I didn’t know this was here.”
“Neither did I.”
They descended.
At the bottom, Julian heard whispering.
“Leo?”
“Dad?”
Julian rounded the corner.
Leo sat behind a heating pipe, clutching the blue box.
Julian dropped to his knees and pulled him close.
“What were you thinking?”
“I heard someone outside the office.”
“So you climbed out a window?”
“Mom showed me the hidden stairs when I was little.”
Julian stared at him.
“Amelia knew about this passage?”
Leo nodded. “She said if I was ever scared, I should go where the house can’t see me.”
Maya crouched beside them. “Who did you hear?”
Leo looked toward the darkness behind him.
“A man.”
“What did he say?” Julian asked.
“He was on the phone. He said, ‘Eleanor failed. Get the boy before the police lock the trust.’”
Julian’s stomach turned.
“Did you see him?”
Leo nodded.
“He had a silver watch with a black face.”
Maya and Julian looked at each other.
Nolan Price wore that exact watch.
Julian called the officers upstairs.
By the time police searched the property, Nolan was gone.
So was his car.
At 3:17 a.m., Julian plugged Amelia’s flash drive into a computer that had never been connected to the mansion network.
One encrypted folder appeared.
Its password hint read:
THE DAY LEO FIRST CALLED YOU DAD.
Julian typed Leo’s birthday.
Wrong.
He tried the day Leo first spoke.
Wrong.
Then Leo whispered, “Dad, I know the date.”
Julian looked at him.
May you like
Leo’s eyes filled with tears.
“It wasn’t you.”
