Chapter 2 - Twenty Seconds on the Courtyard Stones
The USB felt impossibly heavy between my fingers.
I could hear Brandon running through the villa.
Every footstep carried through the open balcony doors above me, first across the upstairs hall, then down the sweeping staircase, then across the ground-floor marble.
Margaret's heels clicked behind him at a slower, steadier pace.
I tried to sit up.
My body refused.
A sharp pressure crushed the left side of my chest every time I inhaled. My ankle throbbed. My right shoulder felt as though it had been pulled out of its socket. I knew enough to understand that getting to my feet might make everything worse, but keeping that drive in my hand would make Brandon finish what the fall had failed to do.
The ornamental fountain stood six feet away.
Six feet might as well have been a mile.
I rolled onto my right side.
The courtyard spun.
I bit down on a cry and dragged myself forward with my left elbow, one inch at a time. The USB scraped across the stone beneath my fist.
The ground-floor door handle moved.
I looked at the fountain.
At its base, a narrow channel carried overflow water beneath a decorative bronze grate. One corner of the grate had lifted slightly from years of mineral buildup.
I shoved the USB beneath it.
The metal drive disappeared into shadow just as the villa door flew open.
Brandon strode out first.
He had lost his jacket. His white shirt sleeves were rolled once at the wrists, and his breathing was hard enough to move his chest. Margaret came behind him, still composed, still immaculate.
Brandon looked at my empty hand.
"Where is it?"
I stared at him.
He crossed the courtyard in three fast steps and crouched beside me.
"Where is the drive, Emma?"
"You pushed me off a balcony."
"You slipped."
The lie came so quickly that for a second I almost laughed.
Margaret stopped beside the shattered phone and looked around the courtyard.
"Don't argue with her," she said. "Find it."
Brandon searched my pockets.
I slapped weakly at his hands, but he caught my wrist.
Pain shot into my shoulder.
"Stop fighting me."
"You tried to kill me."
"I tried to stop you from destroying this family."
There it was.
Not denial.
Justification.
He shoved his hand into the other pocket, then checked the waistband of my pants.
Nothing.
Margaret's eyes moved toward the fountain.
I forced my face blank.
"Maybe it broke with the phone," Brandon said.
"A USB doesn't vanish because a phone breaks," she answered.
Her gaze shifted to the courtyard, methodical and cold.
The fountain.
The flowerbeds.
The drainage channel.
My heartbeat changed.
Brandon heard it in my breathing, or maybe he simply knew me too well.
He followed his mother's gaze.
"You crawled," he said.
I looked down.
A faint smear of blood marked the paving stones between where I had landed and where I now lay.
The trail pointed directly toward the fountain.
Margaret saw it too.
She stepped closer to the bronze grate.
Then a soft electronic chime sounded from inside the villa.
All three of us froze.
Brandon turned toward the open door.
The chime sounded again.
I recognized it immediately.
It came from the villa's security system whenever a camera registered an impact event or tampering alert.
Brandon's head snapped upward toward the small black camera mounted beneath the balcony eave.
Its red status light was blinking.
Margaret's face changed for the first time.
"Was that camera on?"
Brandon said nothing.
May you like
The silence answered her.
📖 Find out what the balcony camera captured—and why Brandon abandons the USB search to reach the villa security system first in CHAPTER 3. 👇
