Chapter 5 - Ethan Finally Told Him Where It Was
Daniel did not scream at Ethan.
He didn’t ask five frantic questions at once.
He sat on the floor beside him and Sophie and said the words Ethan had been waiting too long to hear.
“You’re safe now.”
That did it.
Ethan started crying for real—not the shocked, breathless cry from pain, but the awful, shaking cry of a child who had been holding himself together far beyond what any eight-year-old should.
Daniel wrapped one arm around both children.
Sophie clung to Ethan’s shirt.
Ethan buried his face against Daniel’s shoulder for just one second, then pulled back like he remembered something urgent.
“She wanted something,” he said hoarsely.
Daniel looked at him carefully.
“What?”
“A memory card. Tiny black one. She dropped it in your office. Sophie picked it up. I hid it.”
Vanessa inhaled sharply.
There it was.
The panic.
The proof.
Daniel turned his head and looked at her. She tried to fix her face, but it was too late. The fear in her eyes was naked now.
“What’s on it?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Ethan said. “But she kept saying you can’t see it.”
Daniel held out his hand.
“Where is it?”
Ethan hesitated only because Sophie was still attached to him. Then, very carefully, he shifted his baby sister into Daniel’s lap, dropped flat onto his stomach, and reached under the bed frame.
His small arm disappeared almost to the shoulder.
He felt around once.
Twice.
Then he pulled back with a tiny black memory card pinched between two fingers.
Vanessa moved.
Just one quick step.
Daniel rose so fast she stopped dead.
“Don’t.”
The single word carried enough warning to freeze her in place.
Daniel took the card from Ethan’s hand and stared at it.
Something so small.
Something Vanessa was willing to terrorize his children for.
May you like
He already knew, before he ever viewed it, that whatever it contained was going to divide his life into before and after.
---
