Chapter 1 - The Shattered Cup
The cup was inches from my lips.
Then Lily came running across the grand dining room.
"Daddy, don't drink the tea!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
She knocked the delicate porcelain completely out of my hand.
The cup shattered across the cold marble floor.
A dark, steaming liquid seeped into the expensive white rugs.
Nora, my trusted maid, immediately stepped forward and slapped the little girl across the face.
"How dare you spill what I made?" Nora shrieked.
I barely heard her angry words.
I was staring intently at Lily.
"What did you just call me?" I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Then the cheap silver locket around her neck popped open.
Inside was a photograph of Amelia.
She was my beautiful wife who had supposedly died in a tragic car accident four years earlier.
In the tiny picture, she was holding a newborn baby.
It was my newborn baby.
I looked closely at Lily's exposed shoulder.
There it was.
The exact same crescent-shaped birthmark I remembered seeing on my infant daughter.
My hands started shaking violently as the impossible truth set in.
"Who is this child, Nora?" I demanded.
Nora suddenly had absolutely nothing to say.
Then Lily pulled a hidden, cracked cell phone from the pocket of her small apron.
"She killed Mommy with that tea," Lily whispered, pointing a trembling finger at the maid.
Nora's face changed instantly from anger to pure, unadulterated terror.
There was only one video saved on the phone's screen.
Its timestamp date was the exact night Amelia had died.
I pressed play with a trembling thumb.
Amelia appeared on the screen, looking tired but alive in our master bedroom.
Then Nora entered the frame carrying a familiar teacup on a silver tray.
But before I could see what happened next, another person stepped into the frame.
It was someone I trusted completely.
My older brother, Marcus, stood right behind the maid.
On the video, Marcus looked directly at the camera and smiled a cold, calculating smile.
And Nora whispered, "You weren't supposed to still have that."
May you like
I looked up from the screen just in time.
Nora was lunging directly at my chest with a long, serrated kitchen knife.
