Chapter 24 - The Dead Don’t Knock
The flashbulbs erupted the second Victoria stepped onto the elevated dais of the grand ballroom. Over a hundred reporters, board members, and high-society socialites stood in respectful, hushed silence as the "grieving" matriarch approached the podium.
"Members of the press... friends of the family," Victoria began, her voice cracking with calculated perfection into the forest of microphones. She paused, dabbing the corner of her eye with her lace handkerchief. "It is with a broken heart... a mother’s utterly shattered heart... that I stand before you today. Last night, an unspeakable tragedy took my beloved son, Ethan, his wife, and my sweet, precious granddaughter Lily from this world."
A murmur of sympathy rippled through the room. Several board members bowed their heads.
"Whispering Pines was more than just a home," Victoria continued, her voice gaining strength, shifting effortlessly toward authority. "It was the bedrock of our legacy. In the wake of this catastrophic loss, our family business must not falter. Ethan would have wanted us to remain strong. As the sole surviving trustee of the Medina-Carter estate, I am announcing today the immediate restructuring of Medina Holdings..."
"You might want to hold that announcement, Victoria."
The voice didn't come from the press corps.
It came from the massive double doors at the very back of the ballroom.
The heavy oak doors swung open with a resounding *THUD* that echoed against the vaulted ceiling. The entire room went dead silent. Cameras pivoted toward the aisle like a mechanical wave.
Walking through the threshold was Richard Carter.
He was not wearing his usual timid, oversized cardigan. He wore a crisp, tailored charcoal suit, his silver hair combed back, a visible medical butterfly stitch over his left brow.
And flanking him on either side were Ethan and me.
Ethan looked like a resurrected king. Dressed in a midnight-blue bespoke three-piece suit, his shoulders broad and square, his eyes locked onto his mother with a chilling, predatory stillness that sucked the air out of the room.
I walked beside him, wearing an emerald-green gown—the exact color Victoria had forbidden me from wearing at Christmas dinner when she slapped me across the mouth. In my arms, looking wide-eyed and radiant, was our daughter, Lily.
Victoria’s lace handkerchief dropped from her paralyzed fingers.
The blood drained from her face so fast that her heavy makeup looked like chalk clinging to a skull. Her hands gripped the edges of the wooden podium until her knuckles turned translucent.
"You..." Victoria gasped, her microphone catching the strangled wheeze in her throat. "You're... you're dead..."
"Disappointed, Mother?" Ethan's voice rang through the ballroom without the aid of a microphone, deep, resonant, and dripping with venom.
May you like
Reporters began shouting over each other, flashbulbs exploding in a chaotic, blinding strobe. The room erupted into absolute bedlam as the supposed ghosts walked calmly down the center aisle toward the stage.
***
