Chapter 2: What the Fire Left Behind
Victor was discharged four days later.
Rita was waiting in the parking lot with a bouquet of white roses and a smile that didn't belong to a woman visiting someone else's husband.
They pulled up to the house in Brookline together.
What was left of it stopped them both at the curb.
The front wall still stood.
Everything behind it was black.
Victor didn't speak for a long time.
He just stared at the charred frame where the living room window used to be — the same window Sarah had watched from the bus stop bench.
"She did this," Rita whispered.
"She didn't do anything," Victor said, but his voice had no conviction in it.
"Sarah doesn't have it in her."
That was when Teresa crossed the street.
"She was sitting right there," Teresa said, pointing at the bench.
"Calm as you please.
I thought she was in shock.
But she wasn't, was she?"
Victor turned slowly.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying she watched the whole thing, Victor.
And then she got on a bus."
Rita grabbed his arm.
"Call the police.
She needs to be—"
"Stop." Victor's face had gone the color of ash.
His hand moved to his side, pressing against the place where Sarah's kidney now kept him alive.
Then his phone buzzed.
A message.
No name.
Just four words and a photo attached.
*Read the envelope, Victor.*
The photograph was of the house — taken that same morning, from the sidewalk.
Clear.
Deliberate.
Timestamped.
Victor's hands were shaking when he opened his email and found a second message, this one from a law office in Cambridge, sent the previous evening at 8:14 PM — sixteen minutes before the fire started.
---
What was in that envelope — and what did the lawyers already know?
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The full truth is darker and more powerful than you expect.
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