The execution chamber’s holding room collapsed into immediate, breathtaking chaos. Ethan’s small, tremble-racked finger was pinned squarely on Victor Hayes. The silence that followed felt like the split second before a glass tower shatters.

My mother was transferred from Death Row to a high-security holding unit at the county jail pending a formal judicial review. Victor was held without bail on suspicion of murder, obstruction of justice, and witness intimidation.

But the victory felt terrifyingly fragile.

I sat across from Marcus Vance, my mother’s newly appointed public defender—a ruthless, razor-sharp attorney who had taken the case pro-bono the moment the execution was halted.

“We have a massive problem, Leo,” Vance said, sliding a thick, yellowing case file across the steel desk in his office.

“What problem?” I asked, leaning forward, my knuckles white. “Ethan saw him! Victor was at the house!”

“Ethan’s testimony is vital, but legally speaking, it’s a minefield,” Vance explained, tapping the file. “He was two years old when Arthur Hayes died. The defense—Victor’s high-priced legal team—will argue that Ethan’s memory was manufactured, implanted by trauma, or manipulated by family members. A judge won't overturn a six-year-old conviction based solely on the sudden recollection of an eight-year-old.”

“Then what do we do?” I demanded, panic rising in my chest.

“We find physical proof that places Victor in that house before the police arrived,” Vance said coldly. “Or we find out why Arthur was killed. The original investigation was lazy. The cops had a dead husband, a bloody knife under the wife’s bed, and her fingerprints on the handle. They stopped looking.”

“How did her fingerprints get on the handle?” I asked, the lingering doubt still tormenting my mind.

“I asked your mother that exact question this morning,” Vance replied, leaning back. “She told me that hours before your father died, she was cutting vegetables for dinner. Victor was in the house. He was staying in the guest room at the time. He had full access to the kitchen.”

A realization washed over me like ice water. Victor hadn't just killed my father—he had deliberately set up my mother to take the fall. He wiped the handle, placed her hand back on it, or used her routinely used chef knife knowing her prints would already be locked into the forged steel.

That night, I returned to our childhood home—a place that had sat abandoned, boarded up, and shrouded in dark rumors for six years. The bank had tried to foreclose on it, but the legal entanglements of the murder trial had left the property trapped in probate court.

The yellow police tape had faded to a dirty gray, fluttering in the cold wind.

I pried off the wooden planks covering the back door and stepped inside. The house smelled of dry rot, damp earth, and old dust. My flashlight beam cut through the darkness, illuminating the living room where my childhood had died.

I walked into the kitchen. The dark stain on the linoleum floor where my father’s body had been found was still visible under a layer of grime.

Why did Victor kill him? They were brothers. They ran an estate planning firm together—Hayes & Hayes Financial. After my mother was arrested, Victor took total control of the company. He had even set up a trust fund for me and Ethan.

I had thought he was acting out of brotherly duty.

Now, every gesture of kindness Victor had ever shown us felt like a calculated move to keep his enemies close and his secrets buried.

I walked up the creaking stairs toward my father’s old study. The room had been tossed by police six years ago, but much of his personal library remained untouched. I began pulling books off the shelves, searching for anything the investigators might have missed.

Behind a heavy oak bookshelf near the window, my fingers brushed against a small loose floorboard.

My heart hammered against my ribs. I pried the board up with a metal screwdriver I brought from my car.