“What the hell?” Ethan muttered, pulling his sunglasses down the bridge of his nose.
“Did someone break in?” Patricia gasped, clutching her expensive leather purse tightly to her chest. “Ethan, call the police! We’ve been robbed!”
Ethan pushed the damaged, splintered door open with his foot and stepped hesitantly into the entryway. Patricia followed closely behind him, peering over his shoulder.
The camera angle on my phone shifted automatically to the interior hallway feed.
The moment they stepped inside, the arrogant confidence vanished entirely from Ethan’s body. His shoulders slumped. His hands went slack. He dropped the bakery box. It hit the floor with a dull thud, the expensive fondant cake smashing against the tile, bursting out of the cardboard.
He was staring at the floor.
Claire and Aaron had intentionally instructed the crime scene cleaners not to arrive until tomorrow. They wanted Ethan to see exactly what he had walked away from.
The hallway looked like a slaughterhouse.
There were massive, dark, dried pools of blood soaking deep into the expensive runner rug. Bloody, frantic handprints streaked across the pristine white baseboards where I had desperately tried to drag myself toward the phone. Smashed glass from the water cup was scattered across the kitchen threshold. Medical wrappings, plastic IV caps, and bloody gauze torn open by the paramedics littered the living room floor.
“Oh my god,” Patricia whispered. Her face drained of all color, turning a sickly gray. She pressed a trembling hand over her mouth, visibly gagging at the heavy, metallic smell of dried blood that still hung thickly in the air.
“Madison?” Ethan called out, his voice cracking, pure panic finally bleeding into his tone. “Maddie?!”
He took a frantic step toward the kitchen, his polished shoes crunching loudly on the broken glass.
“Stop right there, Ethan.”
A towering figure stepped out from the shadows of the living room, blocking his path. It was Aaron. He was in his full police uniform, his duty belt heavy around his waist, his badge gleaming on his chest. His face was carved from stone.
Ethan staggered backward, nearly knocking into his mother. “Aaron? What happened? Where is my wife? Was there a home invasion?! Who did this?!”
Aaron looked at him with a disgust so profound it seemed to lower the temperature in the room.
“There was no invasion, Ethan,” Aaron said smoothly, his voice echoing coldly in the ruined hallway. “There was just a coward who locked his pregnant wife inside a house while she was hemorrhaging to death.”