Chapter 6 - The Chamber of Echoes
I lay on the narrow surgical transport gurney, my head wrapped tightly in sterile white gauze, an IV dripping steady pain medication into my left arm. The world felt muffled, as if I were underwater, but the moment Wyatt stepped up to the bed, the fog seemed to clear slightly.
"Sadie," he whispered, kneeling beside the gurney so his face was level with mine. He reached out, gently taking my right hand and pressing it against his cheek. "They're going to fix the bone now. You're going to sleep for a little while, and when you wake up, I'll be right here sitting in the chair next to you."
"Wyatt..." I managed to speak, my voice dry and raspy. "The old man... behind the curtain. Did you find him?"
Wyatt looked into my eye, his expression filled with an incredible tenderness mixed with a fierce, burning resolve.
"I didn't find him in the house, Sadie," Wyatt revealed softly, pulling the cream business card out of his pocket and holding it so I could see the embossed gold lettering. "But he found us. He left this at the front desk for you. His name is Samuel Grayson."
A faint, distant memory flickered in the back of my mind—a memory from my childhood. I remembered sitting in a grand, mahogany-paneled library filled with old leather books, watching an elegant man with silver hair review thick legal documents with my grandfather, Arthur Vance.
"Grandpa’s lawyer..." I breathed out, the realization dawning on me. "He was Grandpa Arthur's best friend."
"He wrote a message on the back, Sadie," Wyatt said, turning the card to reveal the six handwritten words. "Ask about your grandfather’s final will."
Tears welled up in my eye once again, not from physical pain, but from a profound, terrifying instinct that had been buried deep within me for three years.
My grandfather Arthur had adored me. I was the only grandchild who spent summers at his cottage, the only one who sat with him in his rose garden while he read historical biographies, the only one who listened to his stories about building his company from a single delivery truck. When he died suddenly three years ago, my father had handled every aspect of the funeral and the estate. I was in the middle of my final master's thesis exams, completely overwhelmed with grief, and I had simply trusted my father when he told me that Arthur had willed the entire estate to him to manage for the family.
I had never seen the will. I had never attended a probate reading. I had simply believed my father.
"He lied to me..." I whispered, the cold reality settling into my chest. "He lied about everything."
"We’re going to find out the truth, Sadie," Wyatt promised, his voice hard as tempered steel. "Every single lie they told, every dollar they stole, every secret they kept—we're going to drag it all into the sunlight. You just focus on fighting through this surgery. Leave the rest to me."
The anesthesiologist stepped up to the head of the bed, gently tapping Wyatt’s shoulder. "It’s time, Mr. Thorne."
May you like
Wyatt leaned down, pressing a soft, long kiss to my forehead just above the white bandages. "I love you, Sadie. See you in a little while."
As they wheeled my gurney through the heavy stainless-steel doors of Operating Room 4, the bright overhead surgical lights began to blur into long, silver streaks. The last thing I remembered before the cold, sweet darkness of the anesthetic swallowed me was the image of my grandfather’s rose garden, and the lingering, spectral memory of an old man pressing his hand against a windowpane in terror.
