Chapter 6 - WHAT TOBY REMEMBERED Three days later, rain covered the hospital windows.
Toby was physically recovering.
Emotionally, the darkness remained.
He refused to sleep without a lamp.
He panicked whenever a door closed.
And every night around seven fifteen, he asked Julian the same question.
“Can you check the walls?”
Julian always did.
He opened closets.
Checked doors.
Looked beneath the bed.
Then he sat beside Toby until he slept.
On the fourth afternoon, a child therapist named Dr. Rachel Hayes arrived.
She brought no notebook.
No intimidating questions.
Just colored pencils and paper.
Toby liked her immediately.
They drew houses.
Dogs.
Spaceships.
Then Toby drew Blackwood Manor.
Julian watched from across the room.
The mansion was enormous.
But every window was black.
Except one.
A tiny yellow square behind the drawing room.
Dr. Hayes pointed gently.
“What’s there?”
Toby stopped coloring.
“The secret room.”
Julian looked up.
“What secret room?”
Toby glanced at him.
“The one behind where Mommy put me.”
Julian moved closer.
“There was another room?”
Toby nodded.
“I could see it through a crack.”
Julian remembered the service cavity.
It was narrow but extended deeper into the structure.
“What did you see?”
“A chair.”
Dr. Hayes carefully redirected him.
“You don’t have to remember everything today.”
But Toby continued.
“And boxes.”
“What kind?”
“Old ones.”
He drew several rectangles.
Then something else.
A circle.
Julian studied it.
“What’s that?”
“A camera.”
Julian’s pulse changed.
“A camera?”
Toby nodded.
“It had a red light.”
Julian exchanged a look with Dr. Hayes.
That evening, he called Officer Reeves.
Within hours, investigators returned to Blackwood Manor.
Julian went with them.
Walking through the mansion felt surreal.
The party decorations remained.
Wilted flowers.
Half-empty champagne bottles.
A broken glass beneath the piano.
It looked as though time had stopped at the exact moment their family shattered.
They reached the broken wall.
A forensic technician entered the service cavity.
Minutes later, his voice came through.
“Officer?”
Reeves leaned forward.
“What?”
“You need to see this.”
They widened the opening.
Behind the narrow shaft was another concealed space.
Toby had been right.
It was a room.
Small.
Windowless.
Dusty.
But clearly used.
A wooden chair stood near one wall.
Shelves contained document boxes.
And mounted in the upper corner—
a camera.
Julian stared at it.
“What the hell is this?”
Officer Reeves examined the wiring.
“This isn’t old.”
A technician opened one box.
Inside were photographs.
Julian.
Toby.
Business partners.
Board members.
Dozens of people photographed without their knowledge.
Another box contained financial documents.
Copies of contracts.
Bank statements.
Private correspondence.
Julian’s anger became something colder.
Evelyn’s plan had been bigger than custody.
Reeves picked up a folder.
The label read:
MERCER SUCCESSION.
He opened it.
His expression changed.
“What?”
Julian asked.
Reeves handed him a document.
Julian read the first page.
Then the second.
His hands began shaking.
It described a plan to remove Julian from control of Mercer Properties.
Not through divorce.
Through allegations of negligence, financial misconduct, and psychological instability.
At the bottom appeared several signatures.
Evelyn’s was one.
But another name mattered more.
Julian whispered it aloud.
“Charles Mercer.”
His uncle.
The man who had helped raise him after his father died.
Julian looked around the secret room.
Suddenly Evelyn no longer appeared to be the mastermind.
She appeared to be one piece of something much larger.
Then Officer Reeves found an envelope.
May you like
On the front, written in black ink, were five words:
IF JULIAN FINDS THIS, RUN.
