Chapter 6 - Shadows in the Attic
By evening, the house was utterly transformed.
The locks had been changed by a professional locksmith at 4:00 P.M. sharp. Chloe’s suitcases had been dumped on the front porch with a neon-pink sticky note attached to the handle, and her digital access codes to the smart home system had been permanently revoked.
Fiona was back in her own room, tucked safely beneath three heavy, warm quilts in her proper toddler bed, clutching a brand-new golden retriever stuffed puppy that Maya had bought her as a welcome-home gift. The little girl was sleeping deeply, her breathing steady and peaceful, finally free of the cold shadows her father had cast over her world.
Jessi sat at the kitchen island with a cup of chamomile tea, reviewing the inventory of the master safe that Mr. Vance’s team had cataloged earlier that afternoon.
Among the financial portfolios and corporate deeds, there was a heavy manila envelope sealed with red wax that hadn't been listed in the standard tax filings. Jessi picked it up, sliced open the top with a kitchen knife, and slid out a stack of old polaroids and a handwritten journal.
She flipped open the journal. The handwriting wasn't Luca’s. It was neat, elegant cursive belonging to someone else—someone named Evelyn Moretti.
Jessi’s breath hitched. Evelyn was Luca’s mother, who had tragically passed away in a house fire five years before she and Luca had even met.
She began to read, and as her eyes scanned the yellowed pages, a cold terror gripped her spine.
“Luca is showing disturbing signs of pathological detachment,” Evelyn had written in an entry dated twenty-five years ago, when Luca was just ten years old. “He feels no empathy for animals or others. When I caught him locking the neighbor’s dog in the freezing shed overnight just to see if it would cry, he simply smiled and said it was playing a game. I am terrified of what he will become when he grows up. I’ve hidden the family deeds in the attic safe because I know he will try to steal everything I own if I try to get him institutionalized.”
Jessi dropped the journal onto the counter as if it were burning her skin.
The cold realization hit her with the force of a physical blow: Luca wasn't just a selfish, cheating husband. He was carrying a generational darkness, a psychopathic streak that he had hidden behind a veneer of corporate charm and suburban normalcy. And he had begun testing those same sadistic impulses on Fiona—using the "Silent Soldier" game not just as a convenient excuse to get her out of the way, but as a preliminary test of psychological endurance.
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Before Jessi could process the full, terrifying implications of the diary, a heavy, metallic thud echoed from the ceiling above the kitchen.
The attic hatch.
