“Oh, so you’re going to take her side over your own mother? The woman who raised you? The woman who sacrificed everything for you?” she hissed, stepping closer to me. “You think she’s an angel? Ask her where your money is, Tommy. Go ahead. Ask her.”
I frowned, a sudden knot forming in my stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“Tommy, no…” Sarah sobbed, grabbing my arm, her face turning entirely bloodless. “Please, let’s just go. Don’t listen to her. Let’s just leave.”
“No, let’s talk about it!” my mother mocked, a triumphant, wicked smile spreading across her lips. “You send $3,000 a month, right? You think your precious wife has been saving it for a house? You think she’s been buying things for the baby?”
My mother walked over to the kitchen cabinet, pulled out a thick envelope, and slammed it onto the counter.
“Open it,” my mother dared me, her eyes gleaming with malice.
I looked at Sarah. She had covered her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking violently as she wept silently. My heart began to race for an entirely different reason now. A sickening sense of dread crept up my spine.
I walked over to the counter and picked up the envelope. Inside were bank statements, store receipts, and legal notices.
I pulled out the first document. It was a bank statement for the joint account I had set up for Sarah before I left for Texas. Every month, my $3,000 deposit was cleared out within forty-eight hours. But it wasn’t spent on groceries, diapers, or savings.
The statements showed massive, recurring bank transfers to an account name I recognized instantly.
David Miller.
David was Sarah’s ex-boyfriend from college. A man she had assured me she completely broke off ties with years ago. A man who had a reputation in our town for being a smooth-talking gambler and a drug addict.
My breath hitched. I flipped through the pages. Every single month, for the past twelve months, thousands of dollars had been funneled directly to him.
“She’s been funding him, Tommy,” my mother whispered venomously in my ear, her voice filled with dark satisfaction. “Your wife has been sending your hard-earned construction money straight to her ex-boyfriend while you were breaking your back in Texas. That’s why I took control of the house. That’s why I treat her like the servant she is. She’s a thief. She’s using you.”
I felt the room spin. The papers in my hand trembled. I turned around slowly to face my wife, the world around me crashing into a million pieces. The exhaustion from the road, the guilt of not believing her, the rage at my mother—it all collided with this sudden, devastating betrayal.
“Sarah…” my voice was barely a gasp. “What… what is this? Why are you giving my money to David?”
Sarah dropped her hands from her face. Her eyes were red, filled with an agony so profound it looked like death. She looked at the papers, then looked at me, her lips trembling so hard she could barely form words.
“Tommy… it’s not what you think. I swear to God, it’s not what it looks like,” she sobbed, taking a step toward me, reaching out with her raw, bleeding hands. “Please… you have to believe me…”
“Then tell me what it is!” I yelled, the pain tearing through my chest like a physical blade. “Why did you send him thirty thousand dollars over the past year?! While you’re living like a slave in this house?! Why?!”
Before Sarah could answer, the heavy silence of the house was shattered by a sudden, violent crash from upstairs.
It wasn’t the sound of a baby waking up. It was the sound of a heavy wooden door being kicked off its hinges, followed by the terrifying, booming sound of a man’s voice shouting from the top of the stairs.
“Eleanor! Sarah! Get up here right now!” the male voice roared through the house. “I know the kid is back! Give me the rest of the cash or the baby gets it!”
I froze. The blood in my veins turned to absolute ice. That wasn’t David’s voice.
It was a voice I had never heard before in my life—deep, rasping, and dangerously unhinged. And it was coming from inside my son’s nursery.
Sarah let out a blood-curdling shriek and lunged toward the hallway, but my mother suddenly reached out, grabbing Sarah by the hair and pulling her back with a terrifying strength.
“Don’t you dare go up there!” my mother hissed, her eyes wide with a manic, crazed desperation that made me realize, with a sickening jolt, that she wasn’t surprised by the man upstairs at all.
My mother looked at me, her face pale, and whispered the final words that turned my entire reality into a living nightmare:
“Tommy… don’t go up there. If you go up there… he’ll kill us all. You don’t know what we’ve done.”
What dark secret is Sarah hiding about her ex-boyfriend? Who is the terrifying man upstairs holding Liam hostage, and why does Tommy’s mother seem to know him? Find out in Part 3!
