Chapter 117

Chapter 117
Eloise

I never liked the smell of safes. It wasn’t the iron, though the faint smell of metal always lingered, nor was it the dust. It was the way the air filled heavy inside them, sealed for years, carrying with it memories no one had wanted to touch.

When the paramedics left, their stretcher wheels echoing down the hallway, I found myself back in my Father’s study, the space filled with silence. My fingers trailed over the mahogany desk as if I could steady myself on its familiar surface.

Jadeline wasn’t home. I had called her, voice clipped, telling her about Father. She had sighed like it was nothing, promised she’d “Will head straight to the hospital when I'm done here .” Typical. But her absence left me free, and something inside me, call it instinct, call it suspicion, pulled me toward the safe again.

The heavy door gaped open, the lock’s tumblers still warm from where I had turned them earlier. I knelt, the dim desk lamp spilling amber light across stacks of forgotten boxes, cracked folders, and relics from a different life. It smelled faintly of mothballs, old paper, and rust.

I reached first for the familiar one. Mother’s watercolor sets, neatly packed in their tin, still stained around the edges with hues of violet and indigo. I brushed the dust off and my chest tightened. The pages of one of her old sketchbooks fluttered under my touch, the lines of a half-finished sunflower staring back at me, forever waiting to be completed.

Beside it was my childhood bicycle bell, detached, dented, the silver dulled. I lifted it, the faint jingle sounding like laughter from years I could hardly remember. A lump caught in my throat, but I forced it down, setting the bell aside.

Deeper in, under a brittle newspaper clipping, my fingers landed on something harder. A sleek black shape, heavier than the rest. A hard drive.

I froze.

It didn’t belong here. Father’s safe was for sentiment, not technology. He hoarded memories, not devices. Yet this small rectangle sat perfectly in the center, as though fate wanted me to find it. My pulse ticked in my throat, hard and uneven.

I dusted it off, turning it in my hands. No labels. No scratches. The room tightened around me.

I plugged it into Father’s old desktop, the monitor humming awake with reluctant light. The icons blinked, outdated and clunky, but my eyes found the new drive instantly. “Archive.”

One folder. One file. My palms grew slick as I clicked it.

The screen filled with the gray wash of CCTV footage. A parking lot. Rain streaking the lens. Cars passing like shadows. I leaned closer, eyes narrowing as a familiar figure came into view.

Her. Jadeline?

She wore a dark coat, her hair pulled back, lips pressed in a hard line. She moved with precision, bending over a car I knew too well. My mother’s. The license plate seared into my memory like a brand.

My stomach knotted.

Jadeline’s hands worked beneath the hood. She glanced around, cautious, then ducked lower. The camera angle caught her perfectly, her face sharp in the streetlight, eyes glinting with something colder than malice. She moved wires, twisted something, then slammed the hood shut.

I gasped. My hand flew to my mouth.

It wasn’t possible. The date stamped in the corner burned through me: the night of the accident.

I couldn’t breathe.

The footage rolled on. The car pulling out later. My mother and I inside, unaware. Jadeline watching from the curb, arms folded. Not an accident. Not fate. A choice.

A scream clawed its way up my throat but died there, caught in my chest.

The space seemed to tilt. I pressed pause, the screen freezing on Jadeline’s face. Calm. Intentional. My vision blurred, tears stinging hot, but beneath them anger seared hotter than anything Jennifer had ever made me feel.

Jennifer had been cruel, manipulative, and vicious. But this….

I staggered back, hitting the desk, my knees almost giving out. I pressed my palms into the wood to steady myself, nails biting grooves into the polished surface.

“She killed her,” I whispered, voice trembling. “She killed her.”

The truth sank like poison into my veins. And then another acceptance, It wasn’t just my mother she had targeted.

That car was meant for both of us.

I remembered it too clearly. Mother calling me to get that jewellery that I had been eyeing with her that night as my birthday gift. My shoes half-tied, distracted by some silly argument Jadeline had started earlier that night. 

A sound escaped me, half sob, half growl. My body shook, rage bubbling up in a storm I couldn’t contain.

Jadeline hadn’t just taken my mother. She had tried to take me too.

The hard drive clattered against the desk as I yanked it free, the screen going black. My reflection glared back at me in the monitor’s dead glass, pale face, red eyes, hair tumbling wild around my shoulders.

I wanted to tear the room apart. Smash the monitor. Rip every trace of Jadeline out of this house.

But no. No, I had to be smarter.

Rage was fire, yes, but fire could be used. Directed.

I clutched the drive in my fist so tightly the edges dug crescents into my skin.

Memories crashed in uninvited: Jadeline’s sharp smiles, the way she had hovered near Father, near me, always watching. Her little comments that sliced deeper than they should. Her hands always too quick to pull things away, to take.

I had thought Jennifer was my worst enemy. But Jennifer was almost… obvious.

This was worse. And blood betrayal left scars deeper than any rival’s cruelty. I sat there for hours, not knowing how to collect my thoughts. It was all too much for me. It was as if problem liked the sight of me. After what felt like minutes….

A knock startled me, sharp against the study door. I jumped, heart hammering.

“Eloise?” Mike’s voice. Soft, careful. “You in there?”

I swiped at my face, trying to steady my breathing, though nothing could calm the hurricane ripping through me.

“What are you doing here?” I managed, voice rough.

The door creaked open. Mike slipped inside, his gaze immediately narrowing as he took me in. His steps faltered when he saw the wreck of me, trembling, eyes swollen, clutching the hard drive like it was life itself.

“Eloise,” he whispered, crossing the room in two strides. “What happened?”

I shook my head, unable to find words. My throat closed. The tears I had tried to bite back spilled hot, unstoppable.

Mike caught my shoulders, grounding me. His presence was solid, his warmth a tether pulling me from the edge. I shoved the hard drive into his hand.

“Watch it,” I said, my voice breaking. “You have to watch it.”

Confusion darkened his brow, but he didn’t hesitate. He plugged it back in, pulled the file up, and hit play.

I watched his face as the footage unfolded. Watched disbelief morph into horror. His jaw clenched, his breath stilled.

When the screen froze again on Jadeline’s face, his lips parted, eyes burning.

“She—” His voice cracked. He swallowed hard. “Eloise… She did this?”

“Yes,” I whispered. My nails dug crescents into my palms. “She killed her. She wanted me dead too.”

Silence swallowed the room, heavy and suffocating.