NIGHTFALL: THE BROKEN SON-IN-LAW'S LAST WAR

Chapter 5: Two Million Views

By eight in the morning, I was famous.

"Two million views!" Tyler slapped his phone down on the breakfast table so hard the coffee cups jumped. "Two million, and it's not even nine! Look at the comments, Mom, look!"

We were eating in the sunroom, because the dining room was still sealed with yellow police tape. Somebody had scrubbed most of the blood off the hallway floor overnight, but the whole house smelled of bleach and wet stone.

Vivian didn't look at the phone. She was reading the morning paper, and her face was the color of chalk.

On the front page, under a photo of the mansion surrounded by police cars, the headline screamed in thick black letters:

MASSACRE ON HARBOR CREST: SIX DEAD AT PRESCOTT MANSION.

Under it, smaller, in a box on the side:

Psycho Veteran Son-in-Law Melts Down at Family Dinner. Video inside.

The paper didn't say who the killers had come for. It couldn't; the only proof was folded in my jacket pocket, the photo with my face and my address and that tiny government file number at the bottom. I'd read it a dozen times before dawn, and every time, the same question burned in my head. Who in Westria had opened that file, and who had they sold it to?

"Tyler," Vivian said, very quietly. "Did you post that video?"

"Yeah! It's the best thing I've ever filmed!"

"Our family name is on the front page next to six dead bodies," she said, "and you're celebrating."

Tyler's grin slipped a little. "Mom, it's not my fault the cook went crazy."

I stood at the side table, pouring coffee for Harold the way I did every morning. Nobody had told me to stop. My hands were steady today, which felt strange, like wearing someone else's shoes.

"Comment number one," Tyler read out loud, ignoring his mother. "'Bro hit the floor like a wet towel.' Comment two: 'Why is this man allowed near knives?' Comment three..." He snorted. "'Somebody check this guy's basement.' Ha!"

"Enough," Harold growled from the head of the table. His face was grey and tired; he'd barely slept. "Put that thing away."

For once, Tyler did.

I set the coffee down beside Harold's plate. He didn't thank me. He never did. But this morning, he looked at my hands as I set the cup down, the same way he'd looked at them in the dark last night, and he didn't say a word.

Vivian folded the newspaper slowly and set it beside her plate.

"Adam," she said. "Sit down."

In two years, she had never once asked me to sit at her table during breakfast. I sat.

"Six men came into my home last night with guns," she said. "Foreign men. The detective told me they spoke Tarkovan on their radios. Now, I've lived in this house for thirty years. Do you know how many Tarkovan killers came to dinner before you married my daughter?"

"None," I said.

"None." She leaned forward, her cold blue eyes fixed on mine. "The detective thinks they might have come for Father. Business enemies, he said. Somebody angry about the Harbor Line project."

"Nonsense," Harold muttered. "I've made men angry, but I've never made anyone angry enough to send soldiers."

"Exactly." Vivian's eyes never left my face. "You were in the army, weren't you? Overseas?"

"I was a cook."

"So you say. And now foreign men with rifles walk into my dining room, the camera line is cut, and the only person who hid in a hallway and came out without a scratch is you." She tapped one perfectly painted fingernail on the table. "I don't know what you did over there. I don't want to know. But trouble followed you to my door, and I won't have it sleeping under my roof."

"Mother," Natalie said from the doorway.

I hadn't heard her come in, and I always hear people come in. She was dressed in plain jeans and a grey sweater, her hair loose for once, and there were dark circles under her eyes. She'd slept in the cottage last night, in her own room, with the door locked. I'd heard her crying through the wall at three in the morning.

"Don't 'Mother' me," Vivian said. "You saw what happened. Six bodies, Natalie. Six."

"The police said we were lucky to survive. And he's the one who got us all into the cellar, Mother. Every one of us."

"And then he hid in a hallway," Vivian said, her voice rising. "We were lucky, Natalie, and I don't plan to test our luck a second time." She turned back to me. "I want you off this estate by the end of the week. Saturday. Pack whatever little you own and go."

My chest tightened, but not for the reason she thought.

If I left, the people who came last night would still know this address. They'd come back, and I wouldn't be here when they did.

"Vivian," I said carefully. "I don't think that's safe. If those men were looking for someone, they might come back. The family should stay together until the police..."

"Don't you dare tell me what's safe in my own house!" Her voice rose, sharp and high. "Look at you. Two years of shaking hands and sleeping in chairs and screaming at night, yes, the staff hear you, Adam, everyone hears you. And now you want to protect us?" She laughed, a cold, ugly sound. "You couldn't protect a sandwich."

Tyler laughed. Even now, he laughed.

"Ten bucks says he cries again before lunch," he said, picking his phone back up. "I'll get it in HD this time."

"Tyler, I swear..." Natalie started.

"What? Free content, sis. He's basically paying rent now."

"Father," Vivian said, turning to Harold. "Tell him."

Harold was quiet for a long moment. He looked at his coffee, then at his walking stick, then at me. Something was fighting behind his eyes. I wondered if he was remembering a steady hand pulling him across the floor in the dark.

Then he looked away.

"Vivian's right," he said heavily. "It's best for everyone. Saturday, Adam."

Five days. I had five days inside these walls, and no idea when the woman from the van would come back to finish her job.

"And if you're smart," Tyler added, "you'll sign the divorce papers before you go. Save everybody time."

Natalie's hands tightened on the back of a chair. "This isn't how this works. He's my husband, I decide..."

"You decided two years ago," Vivian said, "and look where it got us. Our name in the papers next to the word massacre."

I stood up slowly. My chair scraped loudly on the tiles.

"I'll go," I said. "But when I do, lock every door in this house. Every door, every night. Don't go anywhere alone. Not to the yacht club, not to your charity lunches, not to anything."

Vivian's lips curled. "Are you threatening me?"

"No. I'm asking you."

"Get out of my sunroom."

I walked to the door. Natalie stood in it, blocking my way, and for a second she didn't move. Her brown eyes searched my face like she was reading a chart she didn't understand.

Then she leaned in close and spoke so low that nobody else could hear.

"The cottage. Tonight, eight o'clock," she whispered. "And Adam... this time, you're going to tell me everything, or I'll sign those papers myself."