Chapter 6: Marcus Breaks
Chapter 6: Marcus Breaks
Marcus disappeared the same night the mirror footage was found.
That was what cowards did in my family. They vanished into private clubs, lake houses, offshore accounts, and lawyer offices. But Marcus had never been good at disappearing. He left panic behind like footprints.
Olivia found him by tracking his credit card to a motel two towns over.
“Do you want police there first?” she asked.
“No,” I said.
“Daniel.”
“I won’t kill him.”
“That’s not as reassuring as you think.”
“I need him scared enough to talk and alive enough to testify.”
She sighed. “I’ll text the address.”
The motel smelled like cigarettes and old rain. Marcus opened the door with a bottle in one hand and terror in both eyes.
When he saw me, he tried to close it.
I pushed through.
He stumbled backward. “Get out.”
“Sit down.”
“You can’t come in here.”
“I can do a lot of things tonight.”
His face twisted. “You always were Grandfather’s favorite.”
I stared at him.
“My wife was in a coffin, Marcus. Choose your next words like they matter.”
The fight drained out of him.
He sank onto the bed.
For the first time, he looked younger than me. Not the arrogant brother who wore expensive watches and mocked my marriage. Just a frightened man who had spent his whole life obeying a woman who loved control more than her children.
“She said Elena wouldn’t die,” he whispered.
I almost hit him.
He flinched before I moved.
“She said Pierce knew the dose. She said Elena would wake up after everything was settled.”
“After what was settled?”
“The proxy. The trust transfer. The custody filing.”
“My daughter wasn’t even born.”
“She had documents prepared for that too.”
My stomach turned.
Marcus wiped his face with both hands.
“I didn’t know about the coffin until it arrived.”
“You watched them put her in it.”
“I froze.”
“You helped.”
“I know!” he shouted, then broke. “I know. I know what I did.”
Silence settled between us.
Outside, a truck passed on the wet road.
“Why?” I asked. “Money?”
He laughed once, bitterly.
“With Mother, it’s always money. But with me?” His eyes reddened. “I wanted her to stop looking at me like I was a disappointment.”
That was the saddest thing about Marcus.
He had helped bury a living woman because he still wanted our mother’s approval.
“She was going to kill me too,” I said.
“I didn’t know that.”
“You heard her call.”
“I thought she was bluffing.”
“Mother doesn’t bluff. She schedules.”
He looked away.
I sat across from him.
“Tell me about Dad.”
His face went still.
“I was fourteen,” he said.
I waited.
“You were at boarding school. I was home because I’d gotten suspended. Dad and Mother fought that night. Bad. He found papers in her desk.”
“What papers?”
“I don’t know. Transfers, maybe. He kept saying she had betrayed Thomas and destroyed the company. He said he was going to call Grandfather.”
My throat tightened.
“Then?”
“Mother gave him tea.”
I closed my eyes.
Tea.
It was always tea.
“She put something in it?” I asked.
Marcus nodded. “I didn’t see her do it. But Dad got dizzy. He fell in the study. I ran to call an ambulance, but Mother stopped me. She said he was already gone.”
“He wasn’t.”
Marcus began crying.
“I heard him breathe.”
For a moment, the motel room vanished, and I was fifteen again, standing beside my father’s closed casket while Mother rested a cold hand on my shoulder and told me real men did not make scenes.
I had never seen my father’s body.
She said it was better to remember him alive.
Now I knew why.
“Pierce was there?” I asked.
“Not at first. She called him after. He came with another man. A coroner, I think.”
“Name.”
“I don’t know.”
“Think.”
Marcus shook his head. “I was a kid.”
“You were old enough to remember.”
He looked up, anger flashing through tears. “And you were old enough to come home after Dad died, but you ran back to school and left me with her.”
That landed harder than I expected.
Because part of it was true.
I had hated that house. Hated Mother’s silence. Hated the way grief there felt like another rule to obey. So I left Marcus alone with the monster.
But guilt could wait.
Justice could not.
“Give a statement,” I said.
“She’ll destroy me.”
“She already has.”
He stared at the bottle in his hand.
“I’ll go to prison.”
“Maybe.”
“You won’t protect me?”
“No.”
His laugh cracked. “At least you’re honest.”
“I’ll protect the truth.”
Marcus was quiet for a long time.
Then he stood, walked to his suitcase, and pulled out a small recorder.
“I started recording her after the company audits began,” he said. “Insurance.”
He handed it to me.
“What’s on it?”
“Enough to bury her.”
I took it.
“Why didn’t you use this before?”
He looked ashamed.
“Because every recording also buries me.”
At that moment, red and blue lights flashed across the motel curtains.
Detective Harrow had arrived.
Marcus looked toward the window, then at me.
For once, he did not run.
As police knocked on the door, Marcus whispered, “Daniel, there’s something else.”
“What?”
“Mother has someone inside the hospital.”
May you like
My blood stopped.
“The nurse assigned to Sofia tonight,” he said. “She isn’t a nurse.”
