Chapter 10 - BLOOD ON HER HANDS
The children were moved beneath the altar.
I would never forget that.
Father Michael pulled back a rug behind the communion rail and revealed a trapdoor hidden under old wood. Noah and Sophie clung to each other, refusing to separate. William wanted to go with them. Marcus stopped him.
“If they see you disappear, they search below,” Marcus said. “If they see you stand and fight, they think the children are still behind you.”
William looked at his twins.
Noah tried to be brave and failed. Sophie didn’t try. She simply held her brother and stared at the adults with the quiet disappointment of a child who had already learned rescue could be temporary.
William knelt.
“I am coming back.”
Sophie whispered, “People say that.”
William flinched.
Then he removed the wedding ring from his finger.
He had still been wearing it.
Not Isabella’s ring.
Eleanor’s.
He pressed it into Sophie’s hand.
“I left your mother once because I believed a lie. I will not leave you because of a threat.”
Sophie looked at the ring.
Noah touched it.
“Mommy’s?”
William nodded.
The trapdoor closed over them.
The chapel seemed emptier without the children visible, and somehow more sacred.
Outside, engines stopped.
Doors opened.
Men moved through the snow.
Marcus positioned his remaining guards behind pews and pillars. Father Michael loaded shells into the shotgun with practiced hands. Denise worked frantically on Rosa’s arm in the side office. I stood beside a candle rack holding a fire extinguisher because nobody had given me a gun and I wouldn’t have known what to do with one anyway.
Isabella stood alone near the center aisle.
William approached her.
“What happened in the hospital?”
She looked at the crucifix above the altar.
“Not now.”
“Now.”
The first knock came at the chapel door.
Three slow strikes.
A voice called, “Father Michael, open in peace.”
Father Michael muttered, “Devil learned manners.”
William grabbed Isabella’s arm.
“What happened?”
She looked at him then.
Really looked.
And what I saw in her face was not fear of Whitcomb.
It was fear of being believed too late.
“Eleanor was bleeding,” Isabella said. “Bellamy had sedated her after delivery. Too much. She woke long enough to realize Sophie was gone and Noah was being prepared for transfer.”
William’s breathing changed.
“She tried to stand. Tore something inside. I found her in the corridor.”
“With blood on your hands.”
“I was holding pressure on the wound.”
His eyes searched hers.
“She was alive?”
“Yes.”
The second knock came.
Harder.
Isabella’s voice shook now.
“She grabbed my wrist. She said, ‘Don’t let my father have them.’ I told her I could get Bellamy. She said Bellamy had sold them. Then she gave me the rosary and the nursery key.”
Tears finally spilled down Isabella’s face.
“She knew she was dying.”
William looked like he had been struck.
“I called for help,” Isabella whispered. “Peter came first. He saw us. He recorded just enough. Me over her. Blood everywhere. Eleanor dead before anyone else entered. That was his leash.”
William released her arm slowly.
Isabella wiped her face with anger, as if the tears offended her.
“I did not kill your wife. But I did choose the lie after. I chose the fake death. I chose the wall. I chose strategy over mercy because mercy had never saved anyone I knew.”
The chapel door exploded inward.
Gunfire tore through the sanctuary.
Stained glass burst above us in red and blue shards. Marcus fired back. Father Michael’s shotgun thundered. Men in black coats poured through the entrance, slipping on snow and broken glass.
I dropped behind the candle rack as bullets struck the wall above me.
William dragged Isabella behind a pew.
She looked almost offended.
“You believe me now?”
He fired a look at her.
“I believe my wife trusted you. I haven’t decided what that means.”
A man reached the altar.
I saw his boots inches from the trapdoor.
I moved before thinking.
I pulled the pin on the fire extinguisher and slammed the metal base into his knee. He screamed and fell. I sprayed foam into his face until Marcus grabbed him by the collar and threw him aside.
“Not bad, waitress,” Marcus shouted.
“My name is Clara!”
“Noted!”
More men entered.
Too many.
Then a voice cut through the chaos.
“Enough.”
Everyone froze.
Alexander Whitcomb walked into the chapel.
He was not what monsters were supposed to look like.
He was elegant. Late sixties. Silver hair. Dark overcoat. No weapon in his hands. He walked through broken glass as though arriving late to dinner.
His eyes found William.
Then Isabella.
Then me.
“Clara,” he said warmly. “You have your sister’s mouth.”
My skin crawled.
William stepped into the aisle, gun taken from one of Marcus’s injured guards.
Whitcomb smiled.
“Careful. Men like you rarely know what to do with those.”
William aimed at his head.
“I’m learning quickly.”
Whitcomb laughed softly.
“You won’t shoot me in a church.”
Isabella stepped beside William.
“He will.”
Whitcomb looked delighted to see her.
“Isabella. My most expensive disappointment.”
She lifted Rosa’s revolver.
“Still expensive.”
“Still afraid.”
“No,” she said. “Just finally disgusted.”
Whitcomb’s eyes hardened.
“Where are the children?”
No one answered.
He sighed.
“You mistake silence for loyalty. I invented silence.”
Then he raised one hand.
Peter Lang entered behind him, holding Father Michael by the collar with a gun pressed to the priest’s head.
“Last chance,” Whitcomb said. “The ledger. The flash drive. The children.”
William’s hand trembled around the gun.
I heard something beneath the altar.
A tiny scrape.
Noah or Sophie had moved.
Whitcomb heard it too.
His eyes shifted.
He smiled.
“There they are.”
William fired.
The bullet struck the chandelier above Whitcomb.
Crystal rained down in a glittering storm.
Lights exploded.
May you like
The chapel plunged into darkness.
And from beneath the altar, Sophie screamed.
