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I never knew.

Me.

Nathaniel Vexley. The brother that keeps things like this under wraps.

What better way to keep it secret than to not know about it at all?

My father and I will have words.

The air in the tunnel is cold. Hazel moves ahead with a small flashlight she pulled from somewhere inside the wall.

Ella and I carry the chest between us. I know Ella is getting tired, but Hazel is older and smaller. She can’t take over.

I stay focused on the task at hand. I don’t have the time or bandwidth to question why Hazel possesses knowledge she shouldn’t have. Knowledge that I don’t have.

She knows where the bodies are buried.

The passage turns sharply left, and my shoulder bumps the wall. Pain jolts through me.

“Careful,” Ella says.

Hazel glances back but says nothing.

The tunnel slopes gradually upward, and after what feels like forever, we reach a wooden door reinforced with old iron straps. Hazel stops in front of it.

“Where does this open?” I ask.

“Behind the carriage house.”

“Visible from the house?”

“No.”

“Cameras?”

“Not unless your father added them recently.”

“Who the fuck knows what my father does anymore?” I say, more to myself than to Hazel. “Apparently he tells a fucking maid more than he tells his own son.”

Hazel doesn’t react to my tone. “I don’t think he added any cameras,” she says quietly.

“You don’t think.”

“I know the ones Arthur cared about.”

Arthur.

Not Mr. Vexley.

Not your father.

Arthur.

No one calls my father Arthur. Even my dear mother, may she rest in peace, called him sir.

Hazel opens the door.

We step out beneath a sky that’s dark blue but not yet black. Behind the house, half-hidden by weeds and a leaning stack of old wood, sits a utility cart.