Chapter 14 - The Chapel FireThe sound shattered the old chapel.
Officers moved instantly, weapons drawn, shouting commands that echoed off stone walls. Margaret grabbed my sleeve and pulled me behind a stack of crates as dust rained from the ceiling.
Another shot cracked overhead.
Then glass exploded.
Colored shards fell from the stained-glass window above the altar like broken jewels.
Morales shouted from the vault stairs.
“Stay down!”
I did.
Not because I was afraid for myself.
Because if I died in that chapel, Victoria and Eleanor’s story would keep feeding on my children.
A voice rang out from above.
Not Eleanor.
Damon Reed.
“Vault’s closed, Sergeant! Nobody walks out with those boxes!”
Morales cursed under her breath.
“He made bail?” I whispered.
“No,” she said. “He never reached booking.”
My blood chilled.
Someone had intercepted transport.
Eleanor’s reach had longer arms than custody.
Smoke began curling down the stairwell.
Margaret coughed.
“He’s burning evidence.”
Morales radioed for fire and backup, then looked at me.
“Is there another exit?”
“How would I know?”
Margaret pointed toward the back wall.
“Old chapels had sacristy tunnels. Wealthy families used them during storms.”
Morales stared at her.
“You know this how?”
“I grew up around people who believed God needed private entrances.”
Despite everything, I almost laughed.
Another crash came from above.
Smoke thickened.
Morales ordered two officers to secure the boxes while another searched the wall. Within seconds, he found a rusted handle behind a hanging canvas tarp.
The door resisted.
Then opened.
Cold air rushed in.
A narrow stone tunnel stretched into darkness.
“Move,” Morales said.
Officers began carrying evidence boxes through the tunnel. Margaret took one side of my father’s box. I took the other.
It was heavier than I expected.
Or maybe guilt had weight.
We moved through the tunnel bent low, coughing as smoke followed us. Behind us, the chapel groaned. Above, Damon shouted again, then police returned commands.
I heard a struggle.
A body hitting wood.
Then silence.
We emerged behind the chapel near an overgrown cemetery.
The sky had gone purple. Sirens wailed in the distance.
Officers loaded evidence into vehicles. Margaret leaned against a tree, coughing but clutching the box like a newborn.
I turned back toward the chapel.
Flames glowed behind broken windows.
My father’s truth had almost burned with the building.
But not all of it.
Morales emerged last, soot on her face.
“Damon?”
“Alive,” she said. “In custody. This time with state police watching every breath.”
I nodded.
Then her phone rang.
She listened.
Her face changed.
“What?” I asked.
She covered the receiver.
“Eleanor Vale suffered a medical episode in holding.”
Margaret narrowed her eyes.
“Convenient.”
Morales continued listening.
Then said, “No. Do not move her without state escort.”
She hung up.
“She’s claiming chest pain. Wants transfer to Saint Bartholomew’s.”
I laughed coldly.
“Where Emily, Caleb, and my twins are.”
“Exactly.”
Eleanor was still playing.
Even cornered, she was moving pieces toward the board that mattered.
“No,” I said.
Morales looked at me.
“That’s not your call.”
“Then make it yours.”
She held my gaze, then nodded.
“I already did.”
At the hospital later that night, I found Emily asleep in a chair beside Caleb’s bed. Her bandaged hands rested carefully in her lap. Caleb slept with a dinosaur tucked under his chin. Someone had brought it from lost-and-found, and he had accepted it as if it were treasure.
Ava and Oliver were in a secured neonatal room nearby. The tests had found traces of a sedative—not enough to permanently harm them, the doctors said, but enough to explain their strange sleepiness and breathing scares.
Not enough to harm them.
The phrase was meant to comfort me.
It did not.
There is no acceptable amount of poison in a newborn’s body.
I stood between the two bassinets and watched my children breathe.
A nurse entered quietly.
“Mr. Cole?”
“Yes?”
“There’s someone asking to see the babies.”
My body went rigid.
“Who?”
She hesitated.
“Your wife.”
I stepped into the hall.
Victoria stood between two officers, wrists cuffed in front of her. She looked exhausted now. Truly exhausted. No perfect mask. No smooth hair. No performance.
Just a woman facing the ruins of what she had built.
“I’m not here to take them,” she said.
“No,” I replied. “You aren’t.”
Her eyes filled.
For a second, she looked almost human.
“I wanted to feel something when they were born,” she whispered. “Everyone said I would. The nurses. My mother. You. They put Ava in my arms and I felt… trapped.”
I said nothing.
“I hated Emily because she felt it. So easily. She held them and they stopped crying. I carried them and they screamed.”
I looked through the window at my twins.
“They were scared.”
Victoria flinched.
“I know that now.”
“No,” I said. “You know you were caught.”
The tears stopped.
Again.
Truth had no place to land in her for long.
Her mouth hardened.
“My mother made me this way.”
I turned back to her.
“She may have built the room. You chose to live in it.”
For once, the sentence hit.
Victoria looked away.
An officer said it was time.
As they led her down the hall, she stopped.
“Nathan.”
I did not answer.
“She will come for them again. My mother does not lose gracefully.”
I believed her.
That was the problem.
Because miles away, Eleanor Vale was being transferred under guard to a secure medical facility.
And according to Morales, before she left the station, she had asked for only one thing.
Not a lawyer.
Not a doctor.
May you like
A phone call.
To someone named Judge Albright.
