Chapter 1 - The Locked Room
I stared at the heavy wooden door at the end of the hallway.
For five years, Sarah had told me it was just a storage closet with a rusted lock.
I had never had a single reason to doubt the woman I loved.
Now, with my starving children huddled on the living room couch, that door felt like a nightmare waiting to be opened.
I grabbed a heavy bronze bookend from the decorative table in the corridor.
I swung it against the old brass doorknob with every ounce of strength I had.
The metal shattered instantly, and the door swung open with a slow, agonizing creak.
I reached for the light switch, but the room was already glowing in the dark.
It was not a storage closet at all.
The walls were completely covered in high-tech surveillance monitors, complex medical equipment, and thick stacks of classified files.
Every single camera feed on the screens was pointed at the inside of our own house.
I walked closer to the main monitor, my hands trembling uncontrollably as my mind tried to process the betrayal.
The live feed showed my living room, where Lily and Tommy were resting on the couch.
But there was someone else on the screen now.
A tall man in a dark tactical suit was standing directly behind my children.
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He was staring straight into the hidden camera lens, holding a suppressed pistol.
Then, the man slowly raised his finger to his lips and smiled at me through the screen.
