Chapter 25 - THE FINAL TRIGGER
Charles Whitaker stared at his sister. His knuckles were bone-white on the grip of the revolver. Outside, the storm reached its absolute fury, thunder shaking the foundations of the century-old house, rattling the crystal prisms of the chandelier above their heads.
"You ruined everything," Charles whispered, his voice cracking with madness. "All of you. Margaret. Thomas. Grace. Evan. None of you understood what it took to keep this estate whole. A family requires sacrifice. A family requires a single will."
"You sacrificed your own blood for dirt and timber, Charles," Madeline said from the doorway, her voice ringing with cold contempt. "The state police are already at the gate. Judith Mercer called them forty minutes ago from Boston. The warrants for Caroline’s death and Gregory Shaw’s archives have already been issued."
Charles’s eyes darted toward the window.
Through the curtains, through the sheets of torrential rain, red and blue emergency lights were already reflecting off the dripping pines at the end of the long drive. Sirens wailed faintly through the gale.
The empire had fallen. The walls were breached.
Charles looked down at Evan, who remained on his knees on the carpet, holding Sophie tightly against his chest, with Grace standing guard beside them like an avenging angel.
"You will never have it, Grace," Charles whispered, a horrific, bloody smile spreading across his pale lips. "Neither of you will."
He raised the revolver.
Not toward Grace. Not toward Evan.
He pointed the barrel directly down into the open hole behind the wardrobe—into the exposed junction of the vertical chase where the old lead gas pipes fed the upper fireplaces.
"Charles, no!" Madeline screamed.
"If the covenant is broken," Charles whispered, his finger tightening on the trigger, "the house goes back to the earth."
Evan saw the gleam of the exposed brass gas valve inside the wall, smelling the sudden, sickening sweet odor of propane that had been leaking silently into the partition for the last ten minutes.
Charles pulled the trigger.
The hammer fell.
May you like
The flash from the muzzle ignited the air.
A deafening roar ripped through the floorboards as a sheet of orange flame erupted from behind the wardrobe, blowing the heavy oak furniture into splinters and throwing Evan, Grace, and Sophie backward across the shattered nursery floor into blinding, suffocating smoke.
