Chapter 13 - Sloane's Confession Tape“October 14th,” Sloane’s recorded voice echoed clearly through the empty basement. “Graham is completely blind. He thinks Elena died in that fiery car wreck on Route 9. He doesn't know the body in the morgue was a homeless Jane Doe we paid a corrupt medical examiner two hundred grand to swap out.”
My knees buckled. I caught myself against the edge of the workbench, gasping for air.
“Elena wanted out of the marriage anyway,” Sloane’s voice continued, laughing lightly. “She was suffocating in this suburban cage. So I offered her a deal: sign over her life insurance policy, take a new identity, and vanish to Europe. In exchange, I get her husband, her company shares, and her daughter. But that little brat Maisie... she’s a problem. She keeps asking why ' Mommy’s face looks different in the new pictures.' Children notice too much. If Graham won't let me send her to the behavioral center, I’ll find another way to make her disappear permanently.”
The tape clicked off.
Silence swallowed the basement whole, heavier and colder than before.
So Elena wasn't dead. She had abandoned us. She had traded her family for money and a clean slate in Europe, leaving me to grieve a ghost and leaving Maisie to be hunted by a sociopath.
Suddenly, a sharp, metallic clink echoed from the top of the basement stairs.
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I whipped around, aiming the flashlight beam upward.
Standing at the top of the stairs, silhouetted by the dim hallway light, was a tall figure holding a heavy iron fireplace poker.
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