Chapter 3 - The Men in the Hallway
Lucas switched off the bedroom lamp.
“Can you walk?”
Walter nodded, but when he tried to rise, his knees collapsed.
Lucas caught him before he hit the floor.
The men outside tested the broken door.
“Mr. Bennett,” one called. “Mrs. Bennett said Walter became violent. We’re here to transport him.”
“Transport him where?”
“A private care facility.”
Walter’s mouth twisted bitterly.
“There is no facility.”
Lucas looked around the room.
A service door stood behind a velvet curtain. Walter pointed toward it.
Lucas helped him through just as the bedroom door swung open.
They entered a narrow passage built between the walls of the old mansion.
Lucas pulled the panel closed.
Through a crack, he watched the two men search the room.
One wore a medical badge, but Lucas noticed the badge had no hospital logo.
The second man found Rachel’s note.
“She was supposed to remove this,” he muttered.
“Take it. Find the box.”
Lucas felt Walter tremble beside him.
It was not fear.
It was anger.
The men tore open drawers and ripped paintings from the walls.
One lifted his phone.
“The old man’s gone. Bennett may have found him.”
A pause.
Then Rachel’s voice came faintly through the speaker.
“Do not let Lucas leave that house with anything.”
Lucas closed his eyes.
Until that moment, part of him had still hoped there was an explanation.
There wasn’t.
His wife had sent men to silence him.
Walter guided Lucas through the passage to an unused study on the first floor.
Inside, an old security monitor displayed every hallway in the mansion.
Walter entered a code.
The screen showed Rachel at a beachfront resort, standing beneath a covered entrance.
She was not alone.
A tall man placed his hand on her lower back.
Lucas recognized him from an old photograph Rachel had once hidden in a drawer.
Adrian Cole.
Rachel’s legal husband.
She kissed him without hesitation.
Then she looked directly at the resort camera and smiled.
May you like
“They found the room,” she told Adrian. “By sunrise, Walter and Lucas will both be handled.”
👉 Lucas had just watched his wife order his death while kissing the husband she claimed did not exist.
