Chapter 2

Eleanor instantly grabbed her arm, pulling her back.

"Don't talk nonsense, sweetie!"

"I've raised you for twenty-two years. You are my daughter. No one is kicking you out."

Ethan's gaze locked onto me.

It was cold, defensive, and dripping with thinly veiled disgust.

"Chloe isn't going anywhere," he warned.

"You'd better not think you can just waltz in here and take things that don't belong to you."

I studied him for three seconds.

"Does your family not believe in basic factual verification before a reunion?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" he snapped.

"From the second I walked through that door, I haven't mentioned a single word about bedrooms, assets, or status."

"She fabricated a hypothetical scenario where I throw her out, and you immediately issued a hostile threat based on her unproven assumption."

"From an investigative standpoint, you just executed a classic guilty-until-proven-innocent projection with zero factual foundation."

All three of them stared at me, dumbfounded.

After an awkward silence, Chloe spoke up in a trembling, gentle voice. "How about... I show Valerie around the house?"

Eleanor sighed with relief. "See? Chloe is always the sensible one."

Ethan shot me a stern look. "You behave yourself."

Chloe stood up, flashing me a sweet, practiced smile. "Come on, Valerie."

I kept a measured distance behind her, tilting my body slightly to maintain a clear line of sight.

Chloe walked ahead, giving a breezy introduction to the Vance estate.

The moment she reached the top of the grand staircase, she stopped. She darted a quick look left and right.

Then, with dramatic flair, she threw herself backward.

"Valerie! Don't push me!" she screamed.

I stood rooted in place, watching with a clinical eye as her body rolled down the flight of stairs.

She came to a halt on the third step from the bottom, her forehead covered in crimson.

Eleanor bolted down the stairs, screaming in horror as she scooped Chloe into her arms.

"Valerie! What have you done?!"

Chloe wept softly, playing the broken angel. "Valerie... if you resent me, I’ll leave... why did you have to push me?"

Ethan charged up the landing, his palm swinging toward my face.

I sidestepped smoothly, locked his wrist with my left hand, levered his elbow just shy of its joint limit, and slammed his chest flat against the wooden banister.

"Let go of me!" he roared.

"You initiated an unprovoked physical assault. What I am performing right now is a lawful restraining maneuver," I replied evenly.

His face went purple with pain.

"Chloe is bleeding on the floor, and you're still making excuses?!"

"Whether she fell and whether I pushed her are two completely separate evidentiary questions."

Eleanor shrieked from below, "Let go of your brother right now!"

I released Ethan, pulled on my gloves, and walked down the stairs to inspect Chloe's condition.

"A body tumbling down eighteen wooden steps undergoes multiple high-impact rotations."

"Common trauma sites cluster around the shoulders, elbows, pelvis, knees, and shins."

"She has zero fresh contusions on any of those impact zones. Even her white dress doesn't have a single tear or friction burn."

"She didn't fall from the top. She slid down the last three steps onto a thick wool runner."

Chloe opened her tear-filled eyes and weakly gripped Eleanor's hand.

"Mom, please don't blame Valerie... she's just angry with me..."

"It's all my fault..."

I crouched right down in front of her.

"Don't rush to confess on my behalf."

I pulled a sterile swab from my kit and swiped a smear from her forehead.

"The color saturation is abnormally high. The viscosity doesn't match a laceration of this size."

"Human blood coagulates rapidly outside the body. This blood has supposedly been pooling on your skin for several minutes, yet the margins show zero baseline clotting."

"Preliminary finding: the cut is microscopic. The bulk of this fluid was applied topically."

"It's chicken blood."

"If I check the kitchen trash right now, will I find a freshly butchered bird?"