Total pages in book: 125
Estimated words: 124836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 624(@200wpm)___ 499(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 124836 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 624(@200wpm)___ 499(@250wpm)___ 416(@300wpm)
What is up there? Shit. Shit. Shit.
I tried not to look up.
I swear I did.
Every fiber of my being screamed at me to keep my eyes straight ahead, to focus on TT’s laughter—the only thing that felt real in this moment.
But curiosity, or maybe fear, gnawed at me, pulling my gaze upward before I could stop myself.
And then I saw it.
OH MY GOD!
My breath hitched in my throat and I stumbled, nearly losing my balance.
Bodies.
Dead men.
Nailed.
Strung up like grotesque marionettes dangling from the very high ceiling.
I clamped a hand over my mouth, fighting the bile that rose up in my throat.
What is wrong with Leo?
The scene was a macabre masterpiece of brutal cruelty.
There were seven dead bodies up there, spread wide and nailed into the wooden beams overhead.
Some of them had ropes wrapped around their torsos, securing them in place.
Blood dripped down from their wounds, staining the ceiling in dark streaks, pooling in tiny drops on the floor beneath them.
What the hell?! Like. . .why did he do that?
The ropes cut into their skin, some of them so tight that their arms and legs looked twisted and contorted, like the last moments of their lives had been spent in agonizing pain.
My stomach lurched.
And these weren’t just random men. They were part of Aunt Suzi’s people who she had told to watch TT.
I recognized some of their faces, though now they were pale and bloodied, with empty-wide eyes.
And that wasn’t a metaphor.
Leo took the eyeballs out of their lids.
Oh God, oh God.
I trembled. “W-why?”
“He put them up there so TT wouldn’t see them.”
“He could have. . .put them in. . .a room.”
“Your sisters might have come up and went in a room.”
That still was insane, but I had nothing else to say. Lei knew his father and he’d said all of that so calm because he was used to the horror that Leo could bring.
Jesus Christ.
I tightened my hand around his, clinging to him like my life depended on it.
And maybe it did.
Because right now, in this house, surrounded by monsters in monk robes, it felt like we were standing on the edge of a precipice, one wrong step away from joining the dead men hanging above us.
Lei’s voice snapped me out of my horror. “It’s going to be fine, Moni.”
But I could hear the lie in his voice. He didn’t believe that. He was just saying it to keep me calm.
I should have never looked up.
Never would I make that mistake again.
Because now the image of those bodies was burned into my mind. Every blink brought it back in vivid detail—the nails, the blood, the empty eyelids.
I could barely breathe because my chest was tight with fear and disgust.
But I had to hold it together.
For TT.
For Lei.
For all of us.
Jo and Chloe can’t come in here until those bodies are gone.
We got further down turned the corner and TT’s laughter echoed again, closer this time, sweet and innocent, completely unaware of the death and destruction hanging just feet above her.
Okay. It’s going to all work out.
We reached TT’s room and got in front of the doorway.
And there they were.
TT sat cross-legged on the floor, her tiny fingers tracing the nearly completed wooden puzzle in front of her.
She’s done. Already?
The pieces formed the shape of an oddly produced map.
Only a few fragments were missing, gaps here and there, but the overall picture was almost complete.
An image of a large town within a forgotten valley.
I took it in.
The wooden daggers, which TT had methodically fit together, gleamed under the soft glow of the room's lighting.
No remaining ones were scattered around her as I would’ve expected.
No, she’d found a place for every single one Lei had given her, slotting them in perfectly.
She’d solved an old puzzle that no child her age should have been able to crack.
And with all the daggers now together, I could see that what was once odd markings and symbols, were more than that. They were boxes representing houses, a school, bank, market, church, the post office, and more.
Additionally, there were tiny, almost invisible writing scrawled across the surface.
Little, faint words and numbers wound their way along the curves and edges of the blades, so light they were nearly imperceptible unless you were right on top of them.
My heart skipped a beat.
So many questions hit me.
Was it a message from the Bandit?
Or clear instructions to the map holder?
But that didn’t matter right now because next to TT. . .was Leo scanning a large, opened Bible encased in blue leather.
He had a bunch of blue highlighters next to him and currently he was underlining some phrase on a Bible page.
I turned to the right.
Uncle Song sat in the corner munching on peach cobbler.
A dollop of green whipped cream sat on top of the cobbler and caught my eyes immediately.
That’s Banks’s cobbler. When did he sneak in the kitchen and get it out?