Chapter 2 - The Stone LanternEmergency lights illuminated the terrace in a cold red glow.
Julian ran toward the nearest stone lantern while Ava used the emitter to call the Dobermans away from Eleanor. The dogs returned to Ava’s side, confused and shivering beneath the rain.
Eleanor pushed herself from the mud.
Her silk dress was ruined. Her white hair clung to her face.
She looked less frightened now.
She looked murderous.
“You think a camera makes you powerful?”
Ava kept the dogs between them.
“No. Your decisions made me powerful.”
Julian opened the lantern’s maintenance panel.
The internal drive was missing.
Only a cut fiber cable remained.
“Someone removed it,” he said.
Eleanor looked toward the mansion.
“You said the lanterns were disconnected.”
“They were supposed to be.”
Ava understood.
The attack had been planned around a disabled security system. Eleanor would frighten her, Julian would provide the documents, and the trustees inside would later claim Ava signed voluntarily.
But someone had secretly restored the cameras.
Ava looked toward the upper windows.
A single curtain moved.
Someone had watched the hunt.
The front doors opened.
Mason Reed, Ravenscourt’s head of security, emerged with three guards. He stared at Eleanor in the mud, then at Ava’s bleeding arm.
“Mrs. Ashford, are you injured?”
Eleanor pointed at Ava.
“She turned the dogs on me.”
Mason looked toward Julian.
“What happened?”
Julian hesitated.
That hesitation told Mason everything.
Eleanor recovered quickly.
“Ava attacked me after becoming hysterical during a family discussion. The dogs reacted to the emitter in her hand.”
Ava held it up.
“This stopped them from tearing into me.”
“You brought a weapon onto my property,” Eleanor said.
Ava laughed quietly.
“Your property?”
She reached into her handbag, removed her smartphone, and opened the file her attorney had sent that morning.
The document was a reversion notice created by her father, Henry Bennett, twenty-four years earlier.
Henry’s restoration company had saved Ravenscourt from bankruptcy. In exchange, the Ashfords received lifetime occupancy while the underlying estate remained inside the Bennett Land Trust.
If an Ashford committed documented violence against Henry, his spouse, his child, or a direct descendant to obtain control of trust property, occupancy terminated automatically.
Julian had known about the clause.
His mother had not.
Eleanor read the first page.
Her fingers began to shake.
“This is fabricated.”
“Your husband signed it,” Ava said.
Eleanor’s late husband, Edmund Ashford, had signed beneath Henry Bennett’s name.
Mason ordered his guards to lower their weapons.
Until ownership was clarified, he could not legally remove Ava.
Eleanor turned on him.
“I pay your salary.”
Mason looked toward the dark mansion.
“The estate account pays my salary.”
Ava noticed his wording.
Not Eleanor.
The estate.
Julian closed the lantern panel.
“The missing drive matters more than the deed. Without the recording, Ava cannot prove coercion.”
Mason looked at him.
“The main server may still have a copy.”
“The power failure wiped it.”
“Power failures do not wipe secure storage.”
Eleanor stepped between them.
“No one enters the security room.”
Mason’s expression changed.
Ava realized he had been waiting for that order.
“You already knew the system was restored,” she said.
He looked at the moving curtain above the terrace.
“I received an anonymous instruction at midnight.”
“What instruction?”
“To reactivate every stone lantern and preserve anything recorded on the lawn.”
“From whom?”
Mason handed Ava a printed message.
It contained only one sentence:
ELEANOR WILL REPEAT THE HUNT. THIS TIME, DO NOT LET HER ERASE THE WOMAN.
Ava read it twice.
“Repeat?”
Mason lowered his voice.
“There was another attack on this lawn twenty-six years ago.”
Eleanor’s face emptied.
Julian stared at his mother.
“Who was the woman?”
Ava already knew the answer before Mason spoke.
“Claire Bennett.”
Ava’s mother.
May you like
The woman whose disappearance had defined her childhood.
👉 Ravenscourt’s camera had been activated by someone who knew Eleanor had hunted Ava’s mother on the same lawn decades earlier.
