Chapter 4 - What the Silent Girl Saw
The Vance estate was less of a house and more of a modern fortress hidden behind ten acres of dense woods and high iron gates.
By midnight, Emma had been bathed, fed, and put to sleep in a massive guest room. Nero refused to leave her bed, curling up at the foot of the mattress like a silent guardian statue. For the first time in nearly a year, Emma’s face was smooth and free of terror as she slept.
Downstairs in the dimly lit study, Dominic sat behind a mahogany desk while his technical specialist, an enigmatic woman named Maya, worked on cracking the encryption of the drive Harper had provided. The black notebook lay open on the desk between them.
Harper stood by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out into the dark gardens. She felt hollow, stripped raw by the events of the day.
"Your daughter's mutism," Dominic said, pouring two fingers of amber liquid into a crystal glass and sliding it across the desk toward her. "It wasn't caused by physical abuse, was it?"
Harper turned around, touching her own arm nervously. "Tyrell hit me. He never laid a hand on Emma—he was too smart for that. He knew if he marked her, the school would notice. But the night before we ran... something happened."
"What happened?"
"I was at work—I worked late shifts as a paralegal," Harper said, her voice shaking. "Tyrell was supposed to be watching Emma. When I came home at midnight, the house was dark. Tyrell was standing in the kitchen, drinking in the dark, covered in mud. Emma was hiding under her bed, shaking, clutching her knees. She hasn't spoken a single word since that night."
Maya suddenly chimed in, her fingers flying across her keyboard. "I'm through the secondary firewall. Boss, you need to see this."
Dominic stood up and walked over to Maya's screens. Harper followed slowly, a pit of dread forming in her stomach.
Files, audio logs, and high-resolution photographs began populating the screen. Among them were bank transfers totaling millions of dollars, illegal wiretaps, and covert photos of city officials. But it was a subfolder labeled Project Clean Slate that made Maya gasp.
Dominic clicked on the folder. A series of crime scene photos appeared.
Harper covered her mouth. The photos showed a burning luxury estate—the very estate where Dominic’s family had died. But there were timestamped photos taken before the fire started. Photos of armed men in tactical gear entering the home.
And leading the tactical team, wearing a balaclava pulled down around his neck, was Marcus Tyrell.
"It wasn't just a cover-up," Dominic said, his voice dropping to a whisper so laced with venom that even Maya winced. "He was the executioner."
Dominic scrolled to the next file—a video clip recorded from a dashcam of an unmarked police vehicle parked down the street from the estate that night. The video showed Tyrell walking out of the burning house, removing his gloves.
Then, the camera caught something else.
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In the side mirror of the parked car, reflecting clearly in the streetlights, was a small, four-year-old girl standing in the back seat of Tyrell’s cruiser, staring out the window with wide, horrified eyes.
Tyrell had brought his daughter with him to the hit. Emma hadn't just witnessed trauma—she had witnessed her own father butcher Dominic Vance's family.
