THE THREE TIMES WRITTEN IN BLUE INK

I held Owen’s hand in a death grip as we crept down the back staircase.

The house was completely dark now. Someone had cut the power.

From the front hallway, I could hear voices. Angry, hushed voices.

“I told you she wouldn’t drink it,” a gruff male voice said.

“Just find her,” Nathan’s voice replied. It wasn’t panicked anymore. It was cold. Calculating. “And make sure the kid is locked in his room. The transfer requires him to be alive, but she has to look like a tragic accident.”

I pressed a hand over Owen’s mouth to muffle his gasp.

Tears burned my eyes. The man I had married, the man I had loved for thirteen years, was actively hunting me in the dark.

He didn’t owe money. He wanted the money. He had hired someone to stage a home invasion to kill me and force the trust transfer.

We reached the kitchen. The back door was only ten feet away.

But standing between us and freedom was Judith.

She held a heavy flashlight in one hand and the cast-iron pan in the other.

She turned, the beam of the flashlight hitting my face.

I braced myself, ready to push Owen behind me and fight the woman I once called family.

But Judith didn’t raise the pan.

Instead, tears were streaming down her wrinkled cheeks.

She looked at me, then down at Owen.

Slowly, her hands dropped to her sides.

“I didn’t know,” she mouthed silently.

She reached into her cardigan pocket and pulled out a delicate gold necklace. It was a locket. She clicked it open and held it out to me.

Inside was a picture of a baby. Not Nathan.

“He isn’t my biological son,” she whispered, stepping aside to clear the path to the door. “I adopted him. I thought my love could fix whatever darkness he was born with. I was wrong. Run, Claire.”

She turned around, facing the hallway where Nathan and the hired man were searching.

“Hey!” Judith yelled at the top of her lungs, smashing the cast-iron pan against the kitchen island. “She’s in the basement! I saw her go down!”