CHAPTER 8 — The Seven Houses
The tape revealed a truth no one had imagined.
Blackwood Mansion had been only House One.
The organization had secretly built seven identical safe houses across the country.
Each one carried a different codename.
Blackwood.
Ashwood.
Raven Hall.
Gray Manor.
Iron Creek.
Saint Hollow.
And...
Eden House.
According to the recording...
Only one still remained active.
Eden House.
Its location had never been discovered.
Inside the envelope was an old map covered with strange markings.
Each red X represented one destroyed house.
Only one circle remained untouched.
No address.
Only two words.
"Find Lily."
Ethan immediately contacted Lily Harper.
But she had vanished three months earlier.
Witness protection claimed she had disappeared voluntarily.
Nobody believed that.
Even stranger...
Every surveillance camera capturing Lily's final movements mysteriously corrupted at exactly 11:46 PM.
The same time shown on the pocket watch.
Someone was erasing every trace of her.
Again.
That night Ethan unlocked the final hidden compartment inside the tape recorder.
A tiny memory card dropped into his hand.
It contained only one video.
Lily stared directly into the camera.
She wasn't frightened.
She looked determined.
"If you're watching this...
they found me."
"I can't tell you where I am."
"They're listening."
"But remember what my mother always said..."
She held up an old family photograph.
On the back was a handwritten sentence.
'Paradise is where the dead pretend to live.'
The video ended.
Paradise.
Eden.
Ethan suddenly understood.
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Eden House wasn't a name.
It was a code.
