Chapter 7 - Blood Is Not Always FamilyNobody breathed.
The farmhouse lights hummed overhead.
Maya stared at the black laptop screen, waiting for her mother to reappear. She didn’t.
Cole reached for the keyboard and replayed the last ten seconds.
Rebecca’s face.
Rebecca’s voice.
Someone inside our family.
The words landed harder the second time.
Cole stepped back. “No.”
Rachel did not look surprised.
Maya turned slowly. “You knew.”
Rachel’s eyes glistened. “I suspected.”
“Who?” Maya demanded.
Rachel hesitated.
Cole slammed his hand on the table. “Who?”
Rachel opened a locked drawer and removed a small envelope. She placed it in front of Maya, not Cole.
Maya’s hands felt numb as she opened it.
Inside was a photograph.
A charity gala. Her mother in a navy dress. Charles Arden beside her, smiling for the camera.
And behind them, speaking closely into Ethan’s ear, stood Maya’s uncle.
Victor Cole.
Cole’s younger brother.
The man who brought casseroles after Rebecca died. The man who took Maya to ice cream when she couldn’t stop crying. The man who told Cole to sell the old house because grief made people imagine ghosts.
Maya felt sick.
“No,” Cole whispered.
Rachel said, “Victor handled emergency property transfers for Arden’s foundation. Shell companies. Storage facilities. Private transport contracts.”
Cole shook his head. “My brother is an accountant.”
“He launders records,” Rachel said.
The phone buzzed again.
This time, the message was from a known number.
Uncle Victor.
Maya stared at the screen.
ARE YOU SAFE? I HEARD ABOUT THE HOUSE. CALL ME NOW.
The timing was too perfect.
Cole reached for the phone.
Maya pulled it away again and answered on speaker.
Victor’s voice came through immediately. “Maya? Thank God. Where are you?”
Maya looked at her father.
Cole nodded once.
“I’m with Dad,” Maya said.
Victor exhaled. “Listen to me carefully. Don’t trust Rachel Voss.”
Rachel’s expression did not change.
Maya swallowed. “Why?”
“She was obsessed with your mother’s case. She’s dangerous.”
Maya looked at the wall of evidence behind Rachel. “How do you know I’m with Rachel?”
Silence.
Just half a second.
But enough.
Victor recovered quickly. “I guessed. Cole would run to her.”
Maya’s voice turned cold. “The house exploded.”
“I know. I’m so sorry.”
“How do you know that?”
Another pause.
This one longer.
Cole closed his eyes.
Victor’s voice softened. “Maya, sweetheart, you’re scared. Let me help you.”
“Did you help Mom?”
The line went quiet.
Maya pressed harder. “Did you help her the night she died?”
Victor sighed.
Not grief.
Annoyance.
“You always had Rebecca’s timing.”
Cole stood so fast the chair fell behind him.
Victor continued, “Put your father on.”
Cole took the phone.
For the first time in Maya’s life, she heard murder in her father’s voice.
“Victor.”
His brother laughed softly. “I told you to sell that house.”
“You killed my wife.”
“I did no such thing.”
“You handed her to Arden.”
Victor’s silence was answer enough.
Maya felt Nora grab her hand.
Victor said, “Rebecca was going to ruin powerful people. People who keep the courts funded, shelters open, police departments alive. She thought truth mattered more than order.”
Cole’s voice shook. “She was trying to save children.”
“She was going to start a war.”
“No,” Maya said, stepping closer to the phone. “You did.”
Victor’s tone changed. “Maya, listen to me. Bring me the ledger, and I can protect your father. Keep running, and Arden will make sure Cole is blamed for everything tonight. The explosion. Daniels. The girls. All of it.”
Rachel mouthed one word.
Trace.
Maya kept him talking.
“What happens to Nora and Sophie?”
Victor sighed as if she had asked an inconvenient question. “They go where the court decides.”
Nora began shaking.
Maya’s anger became something clean and sharp.
“No,” she said. “They go home.”
Victor laughed. “You don’t even know where home is.”
Maya looked at Nora.
The little girl lifted her chin.
“Yes,” Nora whispered. “I do.”
Maya repeated into the phone, “Yes, we do.”
Victor stopped laughing.
Rachel pointed to the laptop. The trace had locked onto a location.
St. Agnes.
Victor was already there.
Maya smiled through her tears.
“Uncle Victor?”
“What?”
“Mom was right about you.”
Then she ended the call.
Outside, dawn was still hours away.
Inside, Cole loaded a handgun, Rachel printed maps, and Maya sat beside Nora as the child drew the first honest map of St. Agnes anyone had seen in years.
At the bottom of the page, Nora drew a room with no windows.
May you like
Then she wrote one word beneath it.
BABIES.
