Chapter 7 - The Trap ClosesMara dragged me backward into an empty supply closet, kicking the door shut with her heel before locking it from the inside. The tiny room smelled of bleach, fresh linens, and pure panic.
She let go of me, pressing her back against the wooden door and breathing heavily, her eyes wide in the dark.
“What the hell are you doing here?” she whispered fiercely, gripping my jacket. “I told you to stay at St. Catherine!”
“Thorne,” I choked out, leaning against a shelf of stacked towels to catch my breath. “Thorne is dirty, Mara. He took the two million. He set me up.”
Mara froze. The frantic light in her eyes shifted into something much darker—something resembling profound, exhausted resignation.
“You figured that out,” she whispered.
“I saw the wire transfer on the desk outside,” I said, wincing as I clutched my ribs. “He told me my mother killed Owen, he told me you were framed—was any of that true?”
“Some of it,” Mara said, sliding down the door until she was sitting on the tiled floor, pulling her knees to her chest. “Your mother didn't kill Owen, Grant. But she did pay to cover it up. And Thorne was the medical examiner who falsified the autopsy report nine years ago.”
The pieces snapped together with terrifying clarity.
“He’s the one who’s been blackmailing my mother,” I realized.
“For years,” Mara nodded, looking up at me with tears glistening in her eyes. “When your mother had her stroke two weeks ago, Thorne panicked. Her estate was locked down, and he couldn't access the final payout. So he needed leverage. He needed you out of the picture, or under his control.”
“Which is why his car ran me off Route 9,” I said, my fists clenching so hard my fingernails dug into my palms.
“No,” Mara whispered, her voice dropping to a terrified tremor. “It wasn't Thorne who ran you off the road. It was your brother.”
The world stopped spinning.
For a terrifying, surreal second, I thought I was hallucinating from the concussion.
“My brother?” I laughed, a broken, hysterical sound. “Owen is dead, Mara! I saw him go down in the lake nine years ago!”
“Owen didn't die in the lake, Grant,” Mara said, the tears finally spilling over her lashes. “Your mother paid the coroner—paid Thorne—to fake the death certificate. Owen survived. He’s been living off a trust fund in Zurich under an assumed name for the last nine years.”
The supply closet walls seemed to cave in around me.
Everything I knew—every tear I had shed, every ounce of guilt I had carried for nearly a decade, every nightmare that had haunted my sleep—was a lie engineered by my own flesh and blood to protect a monster.
“And he’s here,” I whispered, staring down at her. “In this hospital.”
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Before Mara could answer, the metal doorknob of the supply closet jiggled.
Someone was trying to unlock it from the outside.
