Chapter 1 - THE GIRL BESIDE THE RED CURTAIN
Richard Hawthorne entered the mansion carrying a white teddy bear in one hand and a leather briefcase in the other.
He had expected music from the sitting room.
Victoria had told him she was hosting a small dinner for several board members. The chandelier should have been blazing above polished glasses and smiling guests.
Instead, he heard a child sobbing.
“I can’t stand anymore!”
Richard dropped the briefcase.
Lily lay beside the heavy red curtain, one hand twisted into the velvet fabric. Her bare feet rested inches from shattered glass. Blood ran from a scrape across her knee, and her small body shook with each breath.
Victoria towered over her in a scarlet gown.
“You clumsy, ungrateful child!”
Lily pressed her face into the curtain.
“Please, I’m sorry… I didn’t mean to!”
Victoria leaned closer.
“You destroy everything you touch.”
“I just want Mommy back!”
Richard stepped into the room.
“What on earth is happening here?”
Victoria spun toward him.
For one second, fear crossed her face.
Then it vanished beneath practiced concern.
“Richard! You weren’t supposed to arrive until tomorrow.”
Lily looked up.
“Daddy?”
Richard crossed the rug and dropped beside her. When he reached for her, she flinched so violently that his hand stopped in the air.
“Lily, it’s me.”
Her eyes moved from him to Victoria.
Richard noticed bruises beneath the sleeve of Lily’s dress. One was yellow and fading. Another was dark enough to be recent.
“What happened to her?”
Victoria lifted both hands.
“She knocked over the side table and threw herself onto the floor. She has been impossible all afternoon.”
“I didn’t,” Lily whispered.
Victoria’s mouth tightened.
Richard removed his jacket and wrapped it around his daughter. She clutched the teddy bear when he placed it against her chest, but she still did not attempt to stand.
“Can you move your legs?”
Lily nodded weakly.
“They hurt.”
Richard reached for his phone.
Victoria caught his wrist.
“She doesn’t need a hospital. She needs discipline.”
Richard stared at her hand until she released him.
“My daughter is bleeding.”
“It is a scraped knee.”
“She said she cannot stand.”
“She says things when she wants attention.”
Lily curled closer to him.
Richard lifted her carefully.
Her cry tore through the room the moment her weight shifted.
Victoria stepped backward.
“What did you do to her?”
“Nothing.”
“Why is she afraid of you?”
“She is afraid you will discover what she has become while you were away.”
Richard carried Lily toward the foyer.
Victoria followed.
“If you take her to a hospital, she will tell them stories.”
Richard stopped at the doorway.
“What stories?”
Victoria’s expression froze.
She had answered too quickly.
Richard looked toward the dark security camera above the hallway arch. The small indicator light was covered with a square of black tape.
“Who disabled that camera?”
“It stopped working weeks ago.”
“Then why is there tape over the light?”
Victoria said nothing.
Richard took Lily to the car and called the family physician from the driveway. Before closing the door, he looked back through the mansion windows.
Victoria stood beneath the chandelier holding the edge of the red curtain.
She was not watching Richard leave.
May you like
She was searching the fabric where Lily had been clutching it.
👉 Richard had found his daughter injured, but Victoria’s panic over the curtain suggested Lily had discovered something more dangerous than broken glass.
