Chapter 1 - The Red Blinking Light
The silence in the room was so absolute it felt like a physical weight. Ethan stood frozen, his hand still stinging from the force of the blow he had just delivered to his seventy-five-year-old father’s face. A red welt was already beginning to form on Richard’s wrinkled cheek, a brutal contrast to the quiet dignity in the old man’s eyes. Richard didn’t rub his face or raise his voice. He simply kept his trembling finger pointed toward the top corner of the mahogany bookshelf.
Sophia’s fake, hysterical sobs hitched in her throat, transforming into a pathetic, choked gasp. She followed the line of Richard's finger, her eyes widening in pure terror as they locked onto the small, black dome of the security camera. The tiny red recording light was glowing like a demon’s eye in the shadows.
"What... what is that?" Sophia stammered, frantically trying to pull the torn edges of her blouse together. "Since when is there a camera in the study?"
"Since my first mild heart attack last month," Richard said, his voice completely steady despite the betrayal radiating from his son. "My doctor suggested it in case I ever fell and couldn't reach a phone. I gave Ethan the master access code."
Ethan’s blood ran cold. The adrenaline that had surged through him when he heard his wife scream was instantly replaced by a sickening wave of dread. He looked at Sophia’s pale, sweat-slicked face, then down at the scattered buttons on the Persian rug. Without saying a word, Ethan pulled his smartphone from his pocket and opened the home security application.
"Ethan, don't!" Sophia shrieked, lunging forward to grab the phone from his hands. "It’s a glitch! Those cheap cameras get hacked all the time, they can manipulate the footage! You know me, baby! You know I would never lie!"
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Ethan easily side-stepped her desperate grasp, his eyes glued to the screen. He rewound the feed by exactly two minutes. The high-definition video played perfectly. He watched his father reading quietly by the window. He watched his wife walk in, check the hallway to ensure they were alone, violently drag her hands through her perfectly styled hair, and deliberately rip the buttons off her own blouse. He watched her step back and scream.
Ethan slowly lowered the phone. The man who had rushed into the room ready to kill to protect his wife was dead. In his place stood a son whose heart had just been ripped entirely out of his chest.
