Chapter 12 - The Man in the Dark
The darkness swallowed the suite with suffocating weight.
For two agonizing heartbeats, the only sound was our ragged breathing and the mechanical drone of the ventilation system winding down to an eerie, dead halt. Outside the door, the heavy banging stopped, replaced by the sound of muffled scraping and urgent, low curses.
"Nicholas, get the deadbolt!" the voice hissed through the wood. "They're coming from the south stairs! You have ten seconds!"
My chest seized. That voice. It had sung me to sleep when I was six; it had cracked with weeping over my mother’s empty hospital bed; it had been buried beneath six feet of wet earth in St. Jude’s Cemetery when I was sixteen.
"Clara, stay behind me," Nicholas whispered, his voice steady despite the tension vibrating through his arm.
He didn't fumble. Nicholas knew the penthouse layout like his own pulse. Moving silently across the plush carpet, he reached the heavy mahogany entrance. Through the gloom, I saw the silhouette of his hand gripping the brass latch.
"Who is with you?" Nicholas demanded softly through the door, his voice like cold iron.
"Nobody. I ditched their tail on the terrace," the voice replied, ragged and short of breath. "The hair, Nicholas! It wasn’t a petty insult—Martha took the sample for the lab on the eighty-fourth floor! Eleanor is verifying her lineage before the trust transfers at midnight! Open the damn door or your wife won't survive to see the sunrise!"
Nicholas turned the deadbolt with a sharp, heavy click and yanked the door open.
A man tumbled across the threshold, colliding with the console table. The sliver of moonlight filtering through the terrace glass caught the sharp angles of his face. He was older, his temples dusted with gray and his left cheek bearing an ugly, faded scar, but the deep-set hazel eyes and the straight line of his nose were unmistakable.
"Dad?" The word tore from my throat before my mind could comprehend it.
He looked up, gasping for air, clutching a bruised ribcage. "Clara... God, Clara. You look just like her."
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Before I could cross the room to touch his face, a muted, pneumatic *thwip* punched through the exterior doorframe, splintering the oak just inches above Nicholas’s head.
"They're on the landing!" my father barked, scrambling to his feet with shocking agility. "Service elevator! Now!"
