Chapter 4 - The Queen on the Stairs
My mother stood at the top of the stairs, draped in a silk emerald bathrobe that matched the color of the vintage ring locked inside my destroyed apartment. Her blonde hair was impeccably styled, defying the early morning hour, and her expression was a masterpiece of cold, aristocratic disdain.
She didn't look down at the police officers. She looked directly at me, her eyes narrowing with sharp, unadulterated venom.
"You brought the police to my home, Claire?" my mother asked, her voice dripping with poisonous calm as she descended the stairs one slow, deliberate step at a time. "After everything your father and I have provided for you—after we let you live your messy, chaotic life without dragging our family name through the mud—you bring strangers in muddy boots onto our carpets?"
"Stop right there, ma'am," Reyes warned, placing a hand near his holster. "Step back from the landing."
My mother ignored him entirely, stopping three steps from the bottom so she could look down upon us like a queen addressing insolent peasants.
"Arthur," she snapped, turning her cold gaze to my shaking father. "Tell me you didn't let these people past the threshold without a warrant."
"Emma, they... they have a warrant," my father whimpered, looking like a whipped dog caught under a heavy rainstorm. "They mentioned... they mentioned a fire, and the Subaru, and—"
"Quiet, Arthur. You're pathetic when you panic," she hissed, finally shifting her cold eyes back to me. "Well, Claire? Are you happy now? You managed to burn down your own life for attention, just like you always do, and now you're trying to drag your brother and your father into your hysterics?"
"I didn't burn down my apartment, Mom," I said, my voice stepping out from behind Reyes's shoulder, steady and ringing clear across the foyer. "Someone else did. Someone who had a duplicated key with a hardware store tag dated six days ago. Someone who drove your Subaru into the city yesterday afternoon at 2:14 PM, broke into my lockbox, and set the fire to cover their tracks."
My mother's composure didn't crack. Not a single muscle in her face twitched. But her fingers tightened around the lapel of her silk robe until her knuckles turned white.
"You've always had an overactive imagination, darling," she said smoothly. "Always making up elaborate fairy tales to make yourself the victim. It’s pathetic. If your apartment caught fire, it’s because you were careless with your space heaters or your cooking. Don't project your incompetence onto this family."
"Is that why Miles's college fraternity ring was found on the floor near my bedroom closet?" I lied.
It was a total bluff. I had no idea where Miles's ring was, or if he had even been there. But the moment the words left my lips, my father let out a sharp, audible gasp, and my mother's eyes flared with a microsecond of genuine, unmasked panic.
That microsecond was all Reyes needed.
"Detective," Reyes barked to the officer behind him. "Secure the upstairs master bedroom and check the study. Search every desk drawer, every closet, and every safe. If Miles Whitman is in this house, bring him down here right now."
"You won't find Miles," my mother said, her voice dropping its haughty sweetness, turning into something cold, sharp, and lethal. "And you won't find anything in this house, because my son has nothing to do with your miserable little life."
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"Where is Miles, Mrs. Whitman?" Reyes asked, stepping toward the stairs.
Before she could answer, a heavy thud echoed from the hallway upstairs, followed by the sound of a window sliding open and frantic footsteps scrambling across the shingled roof above the garage.
