Chapter 3 - BENEATH THE FLOORBOARDS
My pulse spiked. I ignored the sirens pulling into the driveway and sprinted up the grand staircase toward the freezing west wing.
I burst into the small, cold room where my four little girls were huddled together on a single thin mattress, wrapped in a threadbare blanket.
"Daddy?" Emma whimpered, her voice trembling as she looked up.
"Shh, it's okay, baby. Daddy’s here," I choked back a sob, kneeling beside them. "You’re safe now. Nobody is ever going to hurt you again."
I wrapped them all in my heavy cashmere coat, feeling their tiny bodies shivering against me. "Sophie, Grace, Lily, Emma... I need you girls to do something for me. Can you walk down to the kitchen with Mr. Victor? He has warm blankets and hot chocolate waiting for you."
Lily looked at me with big, tear-filled eyes. "Is Mama Vanessa gone?"
"She’s gone," I promised, kissing each of their foreheads. "She’s never coming back."
Victor stepped gently into the room, his eyes softening as he saw the girls. He carefully carried Grace and Lily while Emma and Sophie held his hands, leading them away toward the warmth of the main house.
Once the hallway was empty, I dropped to my knees beside the rusted iron bed frame.
I pushed the thin mattress aside and inspected the aged hardwood floor. Near the back corner, where the wall met the baseboard, I noticed subtle scratch marks in the wood—fresh scratches.
I pulled out my pocket knife, jammed the blade into the seam between two boards, and pried them upward with a sharp crack.
Beneath the floorboards lay a heavy, military-grade steel safe equipped with a biometric fingerprint scanner and a digital keypad.
My mind raced. A safe inside my house? I had lived here for five years and had no idea this existed. Vanessa couldn't have installed it without heavy machinery... unless it was put here before she ever set foot in the house.
Unless Claire put it there.
I placed my thumb on the scanner.
BEEP. ACCESS DENIED.
"Damn it," I muttered.
I tried again.
BEEP. ACCESS DENIED.
Then I remembered the text message. Check the floorboards. Whoever sent that text wanted me to find this.
I looked at the digital keypad. It required a six-digit code.
I typed in Claire’s birthday: 041288.
BEEP. INCORRECT CODE.
I typed in our wedding anniversary: 091514.
BEEP. INCORRECT CODE.
I took a deep breath, my hands shaking. I thought about my four daughters. Their names: Emma, Lily, Sophie, Grace.
I typed in their birthdays in order of birth—except they were quadruplets, born on December 25th. 122518.
CLICK.
The heavy steel locking bolts retracted with a mechanical hiss.
I pulled the safe door open.
Inside was a single leather-bound journal, a black USB drive, and a thick manila envelope sealed with red wax.
I opened the manila envelope first. Inside was a handwritten letter in Claire’s elegant cursive handwriting, dated three days before her death.
"My dearest Nathan,
If you are reading this, it means I am gone, and the trap I set has finally sprung. I am so sorry for lying to you, my love, but I had to protect you and our precious girls.
Caldwell Systems was never just a software company. The algorithms you created were co-funded by a syndicate known as 'The Apex Group'. They didn't want your technology for business—they wanted it for global mass surveillance and human tracking.
When I discovered what they were using your code for, I refused to let them buy you out. So they sent someone into our home. Someone you trust. Someone who has been sitting at our dinner table for years.
Vanessa is not just an assistant, Nathan. She is an operative working for my own brother—your brother-in-law, Arthur.
If you want to save our daughters from what comes next, do not trust the police. Run."
Before the words could even process in my brain, a shadow fell across the open doorway.
"You always were too smart for your own good, Nathan," a smooth, familiar voice chuckled from the dark hallway.
May you like
I snapped my head up.
Standing in the doorway, holding a silenced pistol aimed directly at my chest, was Arthur—Claire’s brother, my trusted business partner, and the uncle my daughters adored.
