Chapter 6
Chapter 6: The Arrival
The chaotic shouting match was abruptly silenced, broken not by another scream, but by the heavy, rhythmic thud of footsteps echoing from the grand staircase.
Thud. Thud. Thud.
Emma froze. Victoria stopped crying, her breath hitching in her throat. Daniel pressed his back flush against the wall, his eyes wide with a new, paralyzing terror.
Richard Carter, expected to be in a high-rise boardroom in Chicago, had taken an early red-eye flight home. He had walked through the front door expecting the quiet comfort of his sanctuary, completely unaware of the apocalypse waiting for him on the second floor.
He appeared at the threshold of the master suite. He wore a bespoke charcoal suit that was slightly wrinkled from travel, his heavy leather briefcase held firmly in his right hand.
"Victoria? Emma? I could hear you shouting from the foyer," Richard said, his deep, commanding baritone filling the space. "What is going on up here?"
The scene before him was a chaotic, incomprehensible tableau. His daughter, breathing heavily, standing over the ruined bedsheets; his elegant wife, kneeling on the floor, trembling and weeping; and a strange, disheveled young man scrambling to sit up from under his own marital bed.
Richard stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes, usually sharp and calculating, clouded with profound confusion. He looked at Emma. He looked at Victoria.
And finally, his gaze locked onto Daniel.
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"Who is this?" Richard asked, his voice dropping to a dangerously quiet whisper. "Who is this boy in my bedroom?"
The atmospheric pressure in the room plummeted. No one dared to breathe.
