Chapter 11 - The Bloodied Lens
The festive music playing from the living room suddenly sounded like a funeral dirge. I stood frozen in the foyer, staring down at the dried crimson flakes peeling off the metallic casing of the security camera.
My hands began to tremble so violently that I nearly dropped the box. The note—"Your father didn't act alone"—was written on heavy, expensive cardstock. I knew that stationery. I had spent five years of a miserable marriage staring at it on my ex-husband's mahogany desk.
David.
I quickly shoved the camera back into the box and hid it in the top shelf of the coat closet, terrified that Emma or Noah might wander into the hallway. I forced a smile onto my face, walked back into the living room, and told the kids I needed to make a quick work call.
Locking myself in the master bathroom, I dialed Marcus's number. He answered with a groggy, confused voice, clearly awakened from his own holiday celebrations.
I told him about the box.
There was a long, horrifying silence on the other end of the line. When Marcus finally spoke, his voice was barely a whisper. He told me he had just seen the local news. Mr. Henderson, my mother's wealthy neighbor who supposedly provided the security footage that cleared my name, had been found dead in his home on New Year's Day. The police had ruled it a botched home invasion, claiming the security system had been ripped from the walls.
My stomach plummeted. Mr. Henderson hadn't voluntarily handed over that footage.
Before I could ask Marcus what to do, my phone beeped with an incoming call. The caller ID was blocked. I switched lines, pressing the phone to my ear.
"Happy New Year, Julia," David's smooth, arrogant voice purred through the speaker. "Did you like my gift?"
I demanded to know what he had done to my father, and more importantly, what he had done to the innocent neighbor.
May you like
David chuckled, a sound that made my blood run cold. He casually explained that my father's little loan shark scheme was brilliant, but tragically underfunded. My father had come to David for the capital to pull it off. In exchange, David wanted the one thing I had fought tooth and nail to keep away from him during the divorce.
He wanted Emma and Noah.
