Chapter 5 - The Honeymoon Cabin
Stepping into the old cabin felt exactly like walking straight into a terrifying ghost story. The furniture was exactly the same as I remembered, covered in white sheets to protect against the dust. Luca quickly ushered us inside and immediately locked the heavy reinforced steel doors. He carried the sleeping twins into the master bedroom and gently placed them on the large mattress. I stood in the center of the living room, wrapping my arms around myself to stop my body from shivering. Luca walked back out from the bedroom, holding a highly secure encrypted tablet in his large hand. He placed it on the wooden coffee table and pressed play on a specific video file. He told me it was the fully recovered security footage from the hallway on the night I left him. I watched the grainy black-and-white video with painful tears welling in my eyes. The screen showed Luca stumbling blindly out of his private office, clearly heavily intoxicated or drugged. Vanessa appeared quickly from the shadows, catching him as he collapsed entirely against the wall. She practically dragged his unconscious body into the bedroom and firmly closed the door behind them. The timestamp clearly showed that I had walked down that exact hallway only ten minutes later. Luca had been telling the complete and absolute truth about that terrible night. I fell to my knees, sobbing uncontrollably for the three years of family life we had lost to her vicious lie. Luca knelt beside me and gently pulled me into his warm, incredibly familiar embrace. He whispered that he would absolutely never stop fighting to protect our family from her madness. For a brief and beautiful moment, the terrifying world outside completely faded away. Then, the advanced perimeter alarm system mounted on the wall began to blare a deafening siren. Ash walked out of the bedroom, rubbing his sleepy eyes and pointing a tiny finger toward the window. He quietly announced that the bad lady with the blonde hair was standing in the front yard.
