Chapter 3 - The Ghost In The Attic
We didn't take the main road. Tobias led me through a series of narrow service tunnels that connected the abandoned nineteenth-century textile mills along the riverfront to the old carriage houses behind our neighborhood. For fifteen years, while the world thought he was reading philosophy books in his motorized chair, my brother had mapped every square inch of this town’s forgotten infrastructure.
By three in the morning, we reached our destination: not our modern family manor on the bluffs, but the carriage house of our grandfather’s estate, boarded up and overgrown with thick English ivy.
Tobias lifted an iron cellar grate hidden beneath a mound of decorative flagstones. We slipped inside, locking the iron bar behind us. The basement was dry, smelling of cedar chips, machine oil, and old paper. But what shocked me was what sat in the center of the room.
Banks of computer monitors glowed with low green and blue light, powered by an array of heavy commercial batteries. On the walls hung printed organizational charts, bank transfer records, and surveillance photographs pinned with red thread. In the center of the web were large, glossy photos of Garrett Vance, my sister Penelope, and three prominent members of our shipyard's board of directors.
""You've been building a war room,"" I said, gazing around the space in astonishment.
""I’ve been building a prison for them,"" Tobias answered, grabbing two dry wool blankets from a wooden footlocker and wrapping one around my shoulders. ""Sit down. Drink this.""
He handed me an insulated thermos filled with hot, unsweetened black tea. As I took a swallow, letting the heat revive my frozen fingers, he sat down at the central terminal and began tapping rapidly across a mechanical keyboard.
""Our house has sixteen security cameras,"" Tobias said, pointing to four monitor panels showing our living room, the master suite, the front driveway, and the private dock. ""Garrett thinks he installed them to protect you while you were sick. In reality, I intercepted the wireless feed two years ago. Watch.""
The living room screen flickered. Garrett and Penelope had just entered. Garrett had changed into dry clothes—a crisp navy sweater and khaki trousers. He held a glass of expensive bourbon, swirling the amber liquid with absolute nonchalance. Penelope was sitting on our Italian leather sofa, kicked back with her feet on our mahogany table, laughing as she scrolled through her phone.
""Did you make sure his chair was locked down?"" Penelope asked on the audio feed, her voice crisp and completely devoid of remorse. ""If Tobias somehow surfaced, we’d have a problem.""
""The boy was buckled into an eighty-pound steel power chair with an extra twenty feet of towing chain wrapped through the sub-frame,"" Garrett replied, his voice calm, chillingly matter-of-fact. ""He went straight to the riverbed like an anchor. And Rosalind's seat belt was tied off with braided aircraft wire. Even if she had a knife, she couldn't have severed it before her lungs gave out.""
Penelope laughed, running a hand over her rounded belly. ""Good. The board meets at nine tomorrow morning. By ten, you'll be declared the interim executor of the estate under her power-of-attorney clause. And by noon, we sign the naval deal over to Vance Marine.""
""And our child?"" Garrett asked, walking over to her and bending down to press his lips against her neck. ""Our child will be the sole heir to both Savannah Creek Shipyard and the entire Vance empire. Everything your father built, Penelope, finally belonging to the people who deserve it.""
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I gripped the edge of the desk, my knuckles turning white. The cold disgust inside my chest hardened into diamond. ""They didn't just want the money,"" I said, my voice dropping an octave. ""They wanted to erase us.""
""They won't get the chance,"" Tobias said, opening a digital archive containing thousands of bank statements. ""They think they are attending a board meeting tomorrow to claim a crown. Instead, they are walking straight into their own public execution.""
