Chapter 5 - THE HOUSE OF ECHOES
Two days after the funeral—which the siblings attended with dark glasses and gritted teeth—they stood on the overgrown lawn of their childhood home. The paint was peeling like sunburned skin, the front porch sagged under the weight of decades of neglect, and the windows were caked with grime. There were no cameras, but Ocampo had hired private security to monitor the perimeter. They were officially inmates of their own greed.
Inside, the house smelled of dust and old memories. Robert immediately claimed the master bedroom, throwing his designer duffel bag onto the bare mattress. Daniel snapped. Years of playing the submissive favorite vanished as he shoved his older brother against the doorframe. “You’re not the boss here, Rob! Your auto shop is bankrupt without this money!”
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“And you’re a dead man walking if those loan sharks find you!” Robert roared back, throwing a right hook that caught Daniel in the jaw. The two men crashed into the hallway, shattering a framed photograph of the three of them as children. Claudia screamed, trying to pull them apart, only to get pushed into the drywall.
They spent their first night in separate corners of the dark, suffocating house. The electricity barely worked, and the plumbing groaned with every use. For the first time in their privileged, deceitful lives, they were forced to face the silence they had condemned their mother to. There were no secretaries to handle their problems, no offshore accounts, no escapes. There was only the heat, the dust, and the ghosts of their betrayal.
