Chapter 10 - THE HOUSE AFTER THE FUNERAL
I stayed in the house.
At first, that surprised me.
For months, I could still see Damian on the living-room floor every time I walked past the coffee table.
I replaced the rug.
Not because there was blood.
There wasn’t.
I simply hated what the room remembered.
The blue panel remained.
Marcus asked whether I wanted it removed.
“No.”
I had the locking mechanism replaced instead.
The compartment behind it stayed empty.
Eventually, I put one thing inside.
A letter to Ethan.
I wrote it almost two years after he died.
I told him I was angry that he had hidden the investigation from me.
I told him Damian had been wrong about me.
I told him Vanessa was trying, from a distance, to rebuild something of herself after finally stopping the excuses.
I told him the company survived.
I told him I missed him.
Then I wrote the hardest sentence.
You were trying to protect me, but I wish you had trusted me enough to let me stand beside you.
I folded the letter.
Placed it behind the blue panel.
Closed it.
No encryption.
No evidence.
No secret worth killing for.
Just the truth I wished we had shared while he was alive.
I sold the house three years later.
A young couple bought it.
During the final walkthrough, the woman admired the dark blue wall beneath the staircase.
“I love this color.”
I laughed.
“You may be the first.”
She looked confused.
“Family joke.”
I did not tell her about the compartment.
It was empty anyway.
Before leaving, I stood in the living room one last time.
Same hardwood floor.
Same staircase.
Different furniture.
Different life.
I thought about the pen disappearing beneath the table.
Damian lunging for it.
The front door crashing open.
Vanessa saying the one sentence nobody expected.
You said nobody found the blue panel.
For a long time, I thought that was the moment Damian lost everything.
It wasn’t.
He had lost much earlier.
The first time he decided his brother’s trust was something to exploit.
The first time he convinced himself family money belonged to whoever was bold enough to take it.
The first time he mistook silence for weakness.
The night of the funeral was simply the moment the rest of us finally saw it.
As I locked the front door for the last time, I remembered Damian forcing the pen into my hand.
Sign it or die here.
I had believed those were my only choices for maybe three seconds.
They weren’t.
There had always been another one.
Refuse.
Make noise.
May you like
Let outsiders see what the family had spent years hiding.
And walk away alive with my name still mine.
