Chapter 23 - The Silence in the Boy’s Closet
Daniel collapsed to his knees, sucking in burning lungfuls of air as Garrett roared in primal fury, pivoting toward the small boy.
“Mason, RUN!” Daniel yelled, the sound tearing through his raw throat.
Garrett backhanded the child with terrifying speed. Mason flew backward into his room, crashing onto the carpet, the brass clock tumbling from his hands.
“You little rat!” Garrett snarled, limping heavily as he lunged through the doorway into the child’s sanctuary. “Just like your mother. Always getting in the way of what belongs to us!”
Fueled by a father’s feral desperation, Daniel didn't hesitate. He scrambled from the floor, threw himself through the air, and tackled Garrett at the knees from behind, taking the two-hundred-pound mercenary crashing down onto the playroom floor.
Lego bricks and wooden train tracks shattered beneath their weight. Garrett thrashed like an enraged crocodile, throwing a savage elbow that caught Daniel square in the jaw, splitting his cheek wide open. Daniel saw white, his mouth flooding with the metallic taste of copper, but he refused to let go. He wrapped his arms around Garrett’s wounded leg, digging his fingers directly into the open laceration Mason’s blow had carved.
Garrett shrieked in agony, rolling violently to break the hold.
“Closet! Mason, get into the closet and lock the safety bolt! NOW!” Daniel roared, taking another heavy punch to the ribs that cracked cartilage.
Mason scrambled across the carpet on his hands and knees. He didn't cry now; the sheer, icy survival instinct that had kept him alive when Vanessa chained him by the garden fence took over. He darted into the deep walk-in closet, slammed the thick solid-core door, and threw the high interior deadbolt Daniel had installed the week after Vanessa’s arrest.
*CLICK.*
The heavy steel bolt engaged.
Garrett kicked Daniel off him with savage force, sending Daniel skidding into the low bookshelf, spilling children’s books and framed family photos across the floor. Garrett dragged himself to his feet, panting heavily, blood pooling around his left boot.
He walked over to the closet door and rattled the brass knob. It didn't budge.
“You think this cheap hollow-core door is going to stop me?” Garrett laughed, a low, wet rumble from his chest. He reached down to his tactical vest and pulled a long, serrated survival knife from its sheath. The polished carbon steel caught the moonlight like a sliver of ice.
“Garrett!” Daniel rasped, hauling himself upright against the shattered bookshelf, his vision swimming, one eye swelling shut from the blow. “Leave him out of this. You want the estate? You want the deeds? You want the money from the offshore accounts Diane tried to hide? I have the signatures. I have the files. In the basement safe.”
Garrett paused, his hand hovering over the wood. He turned his head slowly, his dead eyes fixing on Daniel with cold calculation.
“You’re lying, Dan. The DA froze everything Diane had three days ago.”
“Not the Swiss accounts,” Daniel lied, steadying his breathing, playing the only card he had left in the deck. “The ones registered under Emily’s family trust. The ones Diane forged my name on before she was arrested. The police don't even know they exist yet. Six million dollars. You break that door down, and I swear on my life, you’ll never see a dime of it.”
Garrett stared at Daniel for five agonizing seconds. The greed that ran in the Vance bloodline was a disease, passed down from Diane to Vanessa, and evidently, to Garrett.
Slowly, Garrett lowered the blade.
May you like
“You’re going to walk down those stairs in front of me,” Garrett whispered, stepping away from the closet door. “If you twitch, if you stumble, if you even glance toward the front door, I come back up here and I burn this room with your kid locked inside it. Move.”
***
