Chapter 9 - Ethan BreaksEthan called me at 3:42 p.m.
I was sitting on the floor of my old nursery, surrounded by evidence my real parents had hidden before they died.
I almost did not answer.
Then I remembered his text.
He kept things. Things about the accident.
I put him on speaker.
“What do you want?” I asked.
For once, my brother did not sound smug.
He sounded wrecked.
“Dad knows you went to the house.”
Josephine’s head snapped up.
Detective Cole, standing near the doorway, motioned for me to keep him talking.
“How?” I asked.
“He has alerts on the gate.”
Of course he did.
Richard had not owned Calloway House, but he had watched it like a thief watching a vault.
Ethan breathed shakily.
“He’s losing it, Em.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Silence.
Then, softer, “Emily.”
I closed my eyes.
“What do you know about Northpoint?”
The line went so quiet I thought he had hung up.
“Where did you hear that?”
“From my father.”
“You mean Andrew?”
“Yes.”
Ethan cursed under his breath.
“Dad always said Andrew ruined him,” he said. “That he blamed him for Northpoint and destroyed his career.”
“Did Richard cause the collapse?”
“I don’t know.”
Detective Cole’s eyes narrowed.
“But you know something.”
Ethan exhaled.
“When I was sixteen, I found a box in Dad’s office. Old newspaper clippings. Photos. A hard drive. He caught me looking at it.”
“What happened?”
“He hit me.”
The words landed between us strangely.
I had spent my life thinking Ethan was untouched.
The golden child.
The protected one.
Maybe he had been protected from consequences, not cruelty.
“That doesn’t erase what you did to me,” I said.
“I know.”
His voice broke.
“I know, okay? I was awful to you because it made them like me more. And because if they were watching you, they weren’t watching me.”
I swallowed hard.
That was the closest thing to honesty Ethan had ever given me.
“Where is the box now?”
“I don’t know. But I know where he keeps current things.”
Detective Cole leaned closer.
“Where?”
Ethan hesitated.
“If I tell you, he’ll know it was me.”
“He already knows you’re weak,” I said quietly. “Maybe choose whether you want to stay that way.”
Josephine glanced at me with surprise.
Maybe that was cruel.
Maybe it was necessary.
Ethan breathed hard into the phone.
“There’s a storage unit,” he said. “Bennett Development rents it under a shell company. Fairlane Holdings. Unit 319 at East River Storage.”
Detective Cole was already writing.
“What’s inside?”
“Files. Old computers. Maybe cash. Dad took me once and told me if anything happened to him, I was supposed to burn the blue cabinet first.”
My skin chilled.
“The blue cabinet?”
“Yeah.”
Detective Cole mouthed, Keep him talking.
“Ethan,” I said, “why are you helping me?”
A bitter laugh.
“Because Mom just told me the trust paid for everything. My school. My car. My apartment. Everything.”
I said nothing.
“She said it like I should be grateful,” he whispered. “Like stealing from you was love for me.”
For the first time, I heard the child in his voice.
Not innocent.
But trapped in a different room of the same burning house.
“I don’t know who I am if I’m not their son,” he said.
I looked around the nursery with my real name painted above the crib.
“Join the club.”
He gave a broken laugh.
Then his voice sharpened.
“Emily, listen to me. Dad has another phone. He called someone after bail. He said if you found Northpoint, ‘move Mercer from watching to cleaning.’”
Detective Cole’s face changed.
“Where are you?” she whispered.
Ethan hesitated.
“At home.”
“Leave,” I said.
“I can’t. Mom took my keys.”
“Ethan, leave now.”
A door slammed on his end.
He sucked in a breath.
My mother’s voice came faintly through the phone.
“Who are you talking to?”
Ethan whispered, “I have to go.”
“No,” I said. “Keep the line—”
The call ended.
For one second, I stared at the screen.
Then I stood.
Detective Cole was already moving.
“I’m sending units to the Bennett residence and East River Storage.”
Josephine grabbed my arm.
“You are not going.”
But my mind was full of Ethan at ten years old, standing outside my bedroom door, listening while I cried. He had not opened the door.
Now he was on the other side of one.
I looked at Josephine.
“He helped.”
“And that may save him,” she said. “But you running into Richard’s house will not save anyone.”
She was right.
I hated that she was right.
The next hour stretched like wire.
Police found Ethan walking barefoot two blocks from the Bennett house.
He had climbed out of his bedroom window.
My mother told officers he was having a breakdown.
Ethan told them to check the fireplace.
Inside the ash, they found half-burned documents.
And one photograph that had not fully caught fire.
It showed Andrew Calloway standing at the Northpoint construction site beside Richard Bennett.
May you like
On the back, in Richard’s handwriting, were four words.
He should have agreed.
