Running for my life - The maner

Chapter one The whiskey burned on the way down, but Evan barely noticed. He’d been sitting behind this desk for the better part of an hour, staring at the same photograph, the same faces, the same ghosts. The file lay open in front of him thick, dog-eared, held together by a single rusted clip. Stamped across the front in faded ink: The Manor Fold. He set the glass down and pressed his fingers against his temples. Outside, the city hummed its indifferent song. Somewhere below, a siren wailed and faded. None of it reached him. Not really. Not anymore. Life had seemed so simple back then. So clean. You did what needed doing, you trusted the people beside you, and you moved forward. Now every decision carried weight enough to crush a man. Now he had to decide whether it was time to kill his wife. Whether he should let Rochelle go with Jonathan. Whether any of them deserved the mercy of ignorance. He picked up the whiskey again. Took a longer drink this time. The amber liquid caught the lamplight the only light in the room and for a moment it looked like liquid gold. Like something precious. Like something worth saving. He wasn’t sure anything was worth saving anymore. Leaning back in his chair, Evan closed his eyes and let the memories come. They always came whether he invited them or not. The past was a living thing it breathed, it whispered, it clawed at the edges of every quiet moment. If only it could be rewritten. If only the things that happened could be undone. He would never have had to fake his own death. He would never have had to let Rochelle believe he was gone watch from the shadows as she grieved a man who was standing thirty feet away. But life continues. People continue. And now he has to go forward. See what comes next. He opened his eyes and looked down at the photograph again. The image was old fifteen years at least but the faces were sharp. Preserved in that strange way photographs have of holding people exactly as they were, even when everything about them has changed. His gaze found Jonathan first. The boy had only been sixteen at the time, but he’d already carried himself like someone older. Tall, broad-shouldered, with blue eyes that never quite settled on one thing for long. Always scanning. Always calculating. Jonathan was a computer genius the kind that made government agencies nervous. Hacking came to him the way breathing came to everyone else: effortless, instinctive, constant. He could slip into any system in the world, ghost through firewalls like they were made of smoke. When your business is making people disappear, a boy like that isn’t just useful. He’s essential. Standing next to Jonathan was his mother, Kendell quiet, composed, her hand resting on her son’s shoulder with a gentleness that belied everything Evan now knew about her. And beside her, Jalen. One of Evan’s oldest friends. A man more like Evan than either of them had ever been comfortable admitting. Evan had always taken Kendell for the soft one in that family. The peacekeeper. The gentle voice. Staring at her face now, frozen in that photograph, he thought maybe he’d been wrong about that. Dead wrong. That woman had protected her children with a ferocity that would make wolves think twice. A true mama bear and mama bears don’t just protect. They destroy. Next in the frame was Jack. He looked younger in the photo leaner, less worn as if he’d just sprinted around the entire compound and was trying to catch his breath before anyone noticed. There was a calmness to his expression that didn’t exist anymore. But even then, even in that frozen moment of stillness, Evan could see it: the darkness. Lingering just behind the surface of those pale eyes like something waiting to be let out. Jack had always been dangerous. The only difference between then and now was that back then, he’d still been pretending he wasn’t. Evan’s eyes moved further along the photograph and found Catalonia. She stood next to her father, Christopher both of them polished, poised, smiling with the kind of practiced ease that only comes from a lifetime of keeping secrets. Catalonia had always been intensely private about her father. This visit had been one of the rare exceptions. Christopher had expressed interest in the plan, and so they’d invited him in. Let him see the machinery. Let him stand among the architects. Looking at them now father and daughter, side by side Evan felt something cold settle in his chest. And there he was. Right next to Christopher in the photo, staring at Catalonia like a lovesick i***t. That stupid, open smile on his face. He’d been obvious. Everyone must have seen it. Everyone must have known. He barely recognized that version of himself the one who still believed that love was simple, that loyalty was enough, that the people you chose would choose you back. Fifteen years will kill that kind of thinking. The next face was Scarlet. She stood close closer than she should have been, maybe, but no one would have noticed then. No one was looking for it. Evan stared at her image and felt the old familiar knot tighten in his stomach. If he’d known then what he knew now, would he have done anything differently? Would he have kept his distance? Kept his hands to himself? Or would he have walked the same path, step for step, and ended up exactly here? He hated the answer. He hated that he already knew it. Then his eyes caught something else. Just beyond Scarlet, half-hidden in the periphery of the frame Rex. Standing quiet in the shadows, barely visible, but most definitely there. Evan frowned. He didn’t remember Rex being present that day. He’d thought no, he was certain he’d given Rex an assignment. Sent him elsewhere. Which meant Rex had come back. Or never left. A cold thread of unease wound through Evan’s chest. He’d thought that night would have been free that Scarlet and Catalonia would have had the evening to themselves. But Rex was there. Watching. Present in a way that no one had accounted for. Things have changed, he thought. Or maybe they never were what I believed. He set the photograph down and reached for the whiskey again. The glass was nearly empty. He drained it. He hated to admit what he’d become. The man who couldn’t keep his hands to himself because his wife wasn’t interested. But it hadn’t been that simple it never was. Catalonia had been the one to suggest it. She’d told him, plainly and without emotion, that Scarlet could take care of his needs. That men required certain things and Scarlet was willing to provide them. She’d said it like she was delegating a task. Like it meant nothing. So in a way, Catalonia had brought Scarlet into their bed. And from that quiet arrangement never spoken of, never acknowledged outside those walls something had grown. Something none of them had planned for. Soon after this photograph was taken, everything fell apart. The project. The trust. The people. All of it, scattered like ash in a storm. But now, sitting in the dim glow of his office with the file spread before him, a stranger thought crept in. What if it hadn’t really fallen apart? What if the collapse had been engineered designed to make him feel safe, to make him believe his family was protected? A controlled demolition disguised as chaos. But why? And who had that kind of power? His eyes drifted back to the photograph. Back to Christopher’s face. That calm, knowing smile. Those steady, unreadable eyes. That man could very well be the reason they were all sitting in this mess. The puppet master hiding in plain sight, standing in a family photo with his hand on his daughter’s shoulder and a smile that said he already knew how every single one of them would end up. Evan set the photo down and poured another drink. It wouldn’t take long to find out. One way or another, the truth always surfaces. The only question was whether any of them would survive it when it did.