Chapter 3: The Revelation of the Floorboard
Daniel’s gaze ripped away from his sister and scanned the exposed perimeter of the room. Near the corner molding, he noticed a single, wide oak plank that didn't perfectly line up with the rest of the expensive alignment. Its edge was visibly darker, poorly leveled, and smeared with an excess amount of thick industrial silicone adhesive.
And tucked deep within the narrow, poorly sealed gap between the boards... was a tiny, pale sliver of something white. A human fingernail, scratched and worn to the quick from fighting against the wood.
Mariana let out a broken, guttural sob that echoed off the high-vaulted ceilings, dropping to her knees as she tried to claw at the wood with her bare hands. Inés began to weep silently, her tiny body trembling against her mother’s side.
"Get away from the wall!" Patricia shrieked, dropping her elegant facade entirely as she frantically reached into her designer purse, her fingers searching for her smartphone to alert the estate's private security gate. "You have no right to destroy my property! This is my house!"
Daniel didn't say a word. He stood up, his towering frame casting a massive shadow across the room. Beside the faux fireplace sat a heavy, solid iron decorative pry bar used for shifting logs. He gripped the cold iron handle, his knuckles turning a dangerous shade of white, and strode directly toward the poorly sealed plank.
Patricia stepped directly in front of him, her arms spread wide, her face turning as white as the plaster behind her. All the high-society arrogance was gone, replaced by the desperate, sweating terror of a caught criminal.
"Daniel... please..." she whispered, her voice cracking as a single tear ruined her flawless makeup. "Please... you don't understand the financial pressure I was under. The debt... the business partners... they were going to ruin me. If I didn't get the trust fund money from Grandfather's lineage—"
That single, pathetic confession ignited every ounce of maternal and paternal rage Daniel and Mariana had left inside their souls.
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"Get out of my way," Daniel said, his voice dropping into a register so dangerously low it made the air in the room vibrate.
With a single, powerful sweep of his arm, he shoved Patricia out of his path, sending her crashing hard into her expensive single-serve coffee station. Before she could even scramble back to her feet, Daniel jammed the sharp iron edge of the pry bar deep into the unsealed gap of the hardwood floor.
