The brothers froze. They looked at Amara, then at the locked door, then back at Lisa.“She’s lying!” Amara screamed, her voice cracking. “I never said that! She’s making up conversations now! She’s trying to gaslight all of you!”Lisa stepped forward, planting her foot squarely on one of the printed photos, right over Amara’s snarling face.“The thing about digital photos, Amara,” Lisa said calmly, “is that they come with metadata. Time. Date. Location. And I have the original video file saved on a cloud server, one your hands can’t reach.”She turned to Ethan, who was staring at Amara as if she were a stranger.“Are you really going to believe her over your own eyes?” Lisa asked quietly. “Look at her face in that photo, Ethan. Does that look like a girl who loves her sister?”Ethan’s hand dropped from Amara’s shoulder as if burned. He looked down at her, his voice trembling with a mixture of desperate hope and dawning horror.“Amara… just tell us the truth. Did you… did you really do

Lisa looked at her brother, a frown deepening on her face. Her brows twitched with disgust before her features settled into a cold sneer."And I’m giving you your freedom," Lisa countered. "Sign it. Now. In front of the lawyer."Desperate to end the nightmare, the brothers scribbled their digital signatures onto the new occupancy agreement. Once the lawyer confirmed the document was filed, Lisa finally pulled up the recording. With a few calculated taps, she hit delete and turned the screen to show them the empty folder."Now," Lisa said, her voice turning sharp as she pointed toward the hallway. "Get out. All of you. This is my room now.""But Amara is hurt—" Ethan started."OUT!" Lisa roared.She shoved them toward the threshold. As the brothers stumbled into the hall, Lisa slammed the heavy door shut. Click! In the hallway, the silence was broken by a soft gasp. Amara’s eyes rolled back into her head, and she slumped toward the floor in a dramatic, graceful faint.Ethan and Dani

2:00 AMIn the guest wing, the door to a cramped back room creaked open.Amara stepped into the hall, her face a mask of cold, calculated fury. The whining had stopped. The tears were gone. In their place was a singular, deadly focus. Clutching a small, pressurized canister stolen from the gardening shed earlier that evening, she moved like a wraith. The canister contained a potent, fast-acting sedative spray meant for aggressive animals, now spiked with a chemical relaxant scavenged from the back of the medicine cabinet.Bare feet made no sound on the carpet as she reached Lisa’s door—her door. It was unlocked, exactly as she had hoped.Amara didn't enter immediately. Instead, she donned a thick, industrial face mask tucked into her waistband. Cracking the door just a fraction of an inch, she inserted the nozzle.Pssssssssssssst.A fine, odorless mist hissed into the room, swirling through the air and settling over the bed. Amara waited, counting the seconds with a rhythmic puls

The heavy door slammed shut with a finality that seemed to vibrate through the floorboards.For a long, suffocating minute, Amara remained on the floor, the image of Lisa’s predatory grin burned into her retinas.The silence in the room was heavier than the noise had been. The reality of the trap set by her sister, the betrayal of her parents, and the recording, the digital proof of her own voice admitting to murder, swirled in her head until she couldn’t breathe.“Aaaaaah!”A blood-curdling shriek tore from Amara’s throat.This wasn’t the dainty, practiced sob of a victim; it was the howl of a cornered animal. Scrambling to her feet, her vision blurred in a red haze of fury.“I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you, Lisa!”Spinning toward the vanity, Amara snatched up a heavy crystal vase, the one her mother had given her for her nineteenth birthday, and hurled it against the wall.It shattered into a thousand glittering shards.The destruction didn’t stop there.Designer chairs were kicked ove

Amara saw exactly what Lisa was doing, and a hard frown crossed her face. Her brows twitched with rage, and her eyes darkened."She’s just angry because she got caught," Matthew muttered, though he looked visibly disturbed by the screeching echoing from behind the oak panels."Is that all it is?" Lisa asked, her eyes wide with faux innocence. She leaned closer to the brothers, lowering her voice. "I’m starting to get worried. What are you actually going to do with her? Look at the evidence. She attacked me in the middle of the night with a needle. She’s screaming about conspiracies and 'grins' that no one else saw."She paused, watching the realization dawn on their faces."Amara might have truly lost it," Lisa continued, her voice dripping with artificial sympathy. "To attack her own sister like that... in her own home? Only a person who has lost their mind would be that reckless. Don't you think she needs help? The kind of help only a locked facility can provide?""You mean... an