Chapter 3
James remembered the night Sarah died.
He remembered the rain. The phone call. Caleb arriving at the Bennett estate before James even made it home. He remembered Emily sitting halfway up the staircase in pajamas while grown men whispered about a car that had gone through a barrier on an empty road.
What he did not remember was Sarah mentioning Caleb.
That omission suddenly felt enormous.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” James asked.
Emily looked ashamed.
“I was sixteen. Mom said strange things near the end. She was scared all the time.”
James absorbed that quietly.
Not angry with Emily.
With himself.
He had spent eight years believing Sarah’s fear was grief, stress, and the unavoidable strain of living beside a Mafia family.
Maybe it had been information.
Ryan laughed weakly from the floor.
“You’re turning one sentence from a dead woman into some grand conspiracy.”
James looked at him.
Ryan stopped.
Linda remained harder.
“Sarah was unstable during those last months.”
James stood.
“Be careful.”
Linda folded her arms.
“There. That look. That is why nobody could speak honestly around her husband.”
Emily suddenly whispered, “She wasn’t unstable.”
Everyone turned.
Emily looked at Linda.
“You kept saying that too.”
James’s expression sharpened.
“How would Linda know what people said about your mother?”
Emily answered before Linda could.
“Because Caleb told her.”
Silence.
Ryan closed his eyes.
Linda stared at Emily with naked hatred.
“You ungrateful little—”
James moved one step.
That was enough.
Linda stopped.
Emily continued. Caleb had been inside the apartment twice during the last month. Never when James called. Never when neighbors or extended family visited. He sat in the locked room while Ryan brought Emily inside and asked the same questions.
Where was the Red Room?
What did Sarah leave behind?
What phrase opened the inner cabinet?
And one question that made no sense to Emily at all.
“What did my mother record?”
James looked toward the hallway.
The Red Room did not only exist.
May you like
Sarah had used it.
And Caleb was terrified something she left there had survived her.
