Chapter 2: The Man Behind the Silence
Chapter 2: The Man Behind the Silence
“Stop.”
The voice came from behind her.
Cold.
Controlled.
Familiar.
She froze.
Every nerve in her body already knew before she turned.
Richard.
He stood at the end of the corridor in a white shirt, sleeves rolled up, as if nothing in the world was wrong. As if there wasn’t blood seeping under a sealed door. As if the house wasn’t breathing wrong.
But his eyes—
His eyes were not calm.
They were breaking.
“You opened it,” she said, voice trembling.
“I told you not to come down here,” Richard replied.
A step forward.
Then another.
“I told you to leave it alone.”
Her laugh cracked into something sharp. “Leave it alone? There’s blood under the door, Richard.”
His jaw tightened.
“That’s not blood,” he said.
But neither of them believed it.
The hallway seemed to narrow between them.
Like the house itself was listening.
She backed away slightly. “What did we do?”
That question hit him harder than the silence.
Because Richard stopped moving.
May you like
Just for a second.
And in that second, everything he had been holding together started to fall apart.
