Chapter 14 - THE STRIKE
The next morning, the danger arrived. Not with a knock at the door. Not with a phone call.
With a fire.
I woke to the smell of smoke. Thick. Black. Choking.
I sat up, gasping. Alarms were screaming. Outside the window, orange light flickered against the dark sky.
“Olivia!”
I ran to her room. She was awake, crying, coughing. I grabbed her from the bed, wrapped her in a blanket.
“Mommy! It’s hot!”
“I’ve got you, baby. Hold on tight.”
Daniel burst into the hallway, eyes red, face streaked with soot.
“The back door is blocked! Flames everywhere!”
“Front?”
“Too hot! We have to go out the bedroom window!”
Smoke billowed down the hall. The heat was intense. Behind us, the roof began to crackle and burn.
Daniel smashed the window with a chair. Fresh air rushed in—cold, sweet, life-giving. He climbed out first, then reached back.
“Emma! Now!”
I handed Olivia to him. Then I climbed out myself. We dropped to the grass below, coughing, trembling, watching the house we had just moved into burn to the ground.
Fire trucks arrived minutes later. Sirens screaming. Water spraying. But it was too late. The house was gone.
We stood on the lawn, wrapped in blankets, Olivia pressed between us, shivering.
The fire chief walked over, face serious.
“We’re still investigating,” he said. “But… the way it started. Multiple points of origin. Accelerant. It wasn’t an accident.”
I looked at Daniel. He looked at me.
Margaret.
She hadn’t come back to talk. She had come to destroy.
Later that morning, while we sat in a hotel room, shaken and exhausted, the phone rang. A blocked number.
I answered.
Margaret’s voice, cold and calm.
“Did you sleep well?”
My blood turned to ice.
“You tried to kill us.”
“I tried to warn you,” she corrected. “Stay away from the past. Stay away from Julian Voss. Or next time… the fire won’t be just a house.”
“Where are you?” I demanded. “What do you want?”
“I want what is mine. And I want you to disappear. Take the child. Leave. And never come back.”
“Olivia owns everything,” I said. “You have nothing.”
“Only as long as she is alive.”
The words hung there, sharp and deadly.
“Margaret…”
“Give me the documents. Sign everything back to me. And I let you live. Refuse… and next time, I won’t miss.”
She hung up.
I lowered the phone, hands trembling.
May you like
Daniel saw my face. “What did she say?”
“She knows about Julian,” I whispered. “And she’s willing to kill us to keep him quiet.”
