Chapter 3 - My Mother’s Voice
I forgot how to breathe.
Alexander stared at the message.
Celeste did not.
Her gaze moved toward the office camera as though she knew someone was watching from the other side.
“My mother is dead,” I said.
No one answered.
I remembered the fire five years earlier.
I had been eleven.
Our house stood near the edge of a small town two hours north of Blackthorne. My mother woke me after midnight, pushed a backpack into my hands, and told me to climb through the bedroom window.
Smoke already filled the hallway.
I landed in the wet grass and waited for her.
She never came out.
Firefighters found human remains in the kitchen.
The body was too badly burned for me to see.
A closed coffin arrived three days later.
Celeste had attended the funeral.
I remembered because she was the only woman there wearing white.
“You knew my mother,” I whispered.
Celeste folded her hands.
“Elena contacted me shortly before the fire.”
“Why?”
“She wanted money.”
Alexander looked at her with contempt.
“That is the same story your family told when she disappeared from me.”
“Because it was true.”
The office computer displayed a countdown.
Ten minutes.
Beneath it appeared another sentence.
DELETE THE MEMORY CARD OR ELENA DIES.
Alexander removed his phone and called his security chief.
“Julian, trace the signal.”
No answer.
He called again.
The man standing on the school steps had worn a gray suit and a silver ring.
Alexander looked at the frozen locker video.
The ring belonged to Julian Cross, his personal security chief.
The person who planted the bracelet worked for Alexander.
Or had worked close enough to steal his ring.
Victoria stepped away from her mother.
“Did you tell Mr. Rusk to put that in Ava’s locker?”
Celeste ignored her.
“Mom.”
“I told you to remain silent.”
“You told me Ava stole it.”
“I told you what was necessary.”
Victoria’s face reddened.
“You let me accuse her in front of everyone.”
“You were supposed to take the bracelet to my office. You were not supposed to create a spectacle.”
The humiliation had not been Celeste’s plan.
Victoria had added that herself.
She wanted an audience because cruelty felt more valuable when people watched.
Now the same audience waited outside the office.
Students had begun streaming the confrontation from the corridor.
Alexander removed the memory card from the bracelet.
Celeste moved toward him.
“If you play it, you may kill Elena.”
“If I do not play it, I continue obeying whoever stole seventeen years.”
The countdown showed seven minutes.
I took the memory card.
Alexander looked at me.
“It may be a trap.”
“It already is.”
I inserted it into an isolated laptop provided by his security officer.
One video file appeared.
The date was two weeks before my birth.
My mother sat inside a classroom wearing the bracelet.
She looked young, exhausted, and visibly pregnant.
Alexander gripped the edge of the desk.
He had never seen her pregnant.
Elena looked into the camera.
“Alexander, if you are watching this, Celeste failed to destroy the bracelet.”
Celeste closed her eyes.
My mother continued.
“The scholarship foundation is being emptied through companies controlled by Sebastian Langford. Blackthorne is accusing scholarship students of theft whenever they discover the missing money.”
She held up a ledger.
Names filled the pages.
Students expelled.
Teachers dismissed.
Families paid to remain quiet.
“The evidence is hidden beneath the old theater. The clasp opens the first lock.”
The video flickered.
My mother placed one hand over her stomach.
“There is something else.”
Alexander leaned closer.
“The baby is yours.”
The room became completely silent.
I looked at him.
He looked at me.
Every unanswered question from my childhood entered the space between us.
Why my mother refused to name my father.
Why she cut the man from the photograph but kept the bracelet.
Why she taught me never to trust rich people who called control protection.
Elena continued.
“I did not leave because I stopped loving you. Your father threatened the child. He said the Vale name could not survive a public scandal involving stolen school funds.”
Alexander’s face changed.
“My father was dead before the fire,” he said.
The recording had been made twelve years before his father’s reported death.
My mother looked frightened even through the old image.
“Celeste promised to help me disappear. I believed her. That was my mistake.”
The video ended abruptly.
The countdown on Celeste’s computer reached zero.
Nothing happened.
Then my phone rang.
The caller identification displayed one word.
MOM.
My hands shook as I answered.
For several seconds, there was only static.
Then I heard breathing.
A woman whispered, “Ava?”
My knees nearly failed.
“Mom?”
“Do not let Alexander take you beneath the theater.”
The line cracked.
“Where are you?”
“Julian knows.”
A sound interrupted her.
A door opening.
My mother’s voice became urgent.
“Celeste is not the one who ordered the fire.”
Then a man took the phone.
“Ava, walk out of the school alone, or your mother disappears for good.”
The call ended.
Alexander looked toward the corridor.
May you like
Every door in the administration building had locked automatically.
Continue to the next part: Ava hears her mother alive while an unseen man traps everyone inside the school and demands she surrender alone.
