She stared at the floor, fingers digging into the carpet. "She... she said I had to hold Lily," she croaked, eyes flicking to the empty room.
My heart hammered. The memory of the livestream replayed, a loop of terror that refused to fade.
"Did she say anything else?" I asked, voice low.
She nodded, trembling. "She whispered a name—Eli. She said if I didn't keep Lily still, something would happen... something about the inheritance." The words fell like shards.
My mind raced. Eli—Lily's older brother—had vanished months ago, a mystery tangled with the family's fortune.
I recalled the hushed conversations at dinner, the way Vanessa would glance toward the attic whenever the topic arose.
Chloe's breath hitched. "She told me... if the money didn't stay in the family, they'd take Lily," she whispered, eyes wide with fear.
I felt a cold hand grip my own throat. The truth was sliding into place, a puzzle with a missing piece—Eli.
Later, as the house settled into an uneasy quiet, I could still hear Lily's last sob echoing in the hallway.
My thoughts churned: Was Eli still out there, watching? Or had something worse taken his place?
Attic Discovery
The attic stairs groaned under my weight, each step a reminder of the secrets stacked above.
Dust swirled like ghosts as I pushed aside cobwebs, the flashlight beam cutting through the gloom.
Boxes labeled "Vanessa" and "Lily" littered the floor, but one chest, bound in tarnished iron, drew my eye.
It was locked, the latch rusted shut, as if waiting for a key that never came.
I forced the lock with a screwdriver, feeling the metal give with a satisfying click.
Inside lay Lily's original diary, its pages yellowed, a fountain pen perched on top like a silent witness.
Beside it, a stack of old photographs—Vanessa as a young woman, smiling beside a boy I recognized as Eli.
And there, in the center, lay a pair of scissors, the blades still stained with a dark, dried sheen.
I lifted the diary, flipping to a page marked with a trembling hand.
"I know what Aunt Vanessa is doing. She pretends to protect us, but she's hiding the truth about Eli. I will expose her fraud. The inheritance belongs to us, not to her lies. If anyone reads this, they must know—she will kill to keep the secret."
The words hit me like a cold wind; Lily had planned to reveal everything.
My fingers traced the ink, feeling the weight of her fear and resolve.
Then I stared at the scissors, the blood still glistening under the attic's dim light.
A chilling thought snapped into focus: the DNA on the blades matched Eli's profile, a match confirmed earlier by the lab.
My pulse surged. If the blood belonged to Eli, he wasn't dead—he was here, perhaps watching, perhaps...the very hands that cut Lily's hair.
Confrontation in the Study
“Vanessa, look at this.” I thrust the diary onto the oak desk, the leather crackling under my fingers.
Her eyes flicked to the gilt-edged pages, then to the grainy footage still looping on my laptop. The silence in the room thickened, broken only by the soft hum of the fluorescent light.
