Chapter 2: The Bottle on the Landing
Part 2 ⬇️
Gideon didn't say another word.
He walked up every one of those nineteen steps, one hand trailing the wall, eyes on the stone.
I watched him from the floor.
My wrist was screaming.
My head was still bleeding.
But I couldn't look away.
He stopped at the top landing.
Crouched down.
Touched something.
"It starts here." His voice was quiet.
Too quiet.
"Someone poured it from the top."
Walter appeared in the kitchen doorway, took one look at me, and went white.
Then we both heard it.
Footsteps on the upper floor.
Unhurried.
Calm.
Rossella Marquetti appeared at the top of the stairs in a silk robe, arms folded, looking down at me the way you look at a stain on the carpet.
"Another clumsy one," she said.
"That's three this year."
Gideon turned to face his sister.
Something shifted in the room.
"She didn't fall, Rossella."
She smiled.
Didn't flinch.
Didn't even blink.
"Of course she did.
These old stairs are dangerous.
I've said so for months." She glanced at Walter.
"Haven't I said so, Walter?"
Walter said nothing.
That silence told me everything.
Then Gideon reached into his shirt pocket and held something up.
A small glass bottle.
Empty.
Found on the landing.
Rossella's smile didn't disappear.
But her hands tightened against her arms.
And that was when I realized — this wasn't the first time she had done this.
---
What Gideon found next — and what Adeline finally remembered about the night before — changes everything.
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The truth is worse than anyone in that mansion wanted her to know.
