CHAPTER 2: WHAT THE FIRE LEFT BEHIND
The judge paused the trial.
Nobody understood why a twenty-year-old fire mattered in a theft case.
Except Marcus.
That night, he barely slept.
Because the memory came back.
Flames. Screams. Smoke.
And a warehouse owned by the Langford family burning to the ground.
Back then, Marcus was just a teenager.
His mother worked bookkeeping for them.
After the fire… everything changed.
She was blamed.
Fired.
Blacklisted.
Destroyed.
And she always said the same thing:
“I didn’t do anything wrong.”
But no one believed her.
The next morning, the boy returned to court with an elderly woman.
His grandmother.
She walked slowly, but her voice was steady.
“I kept something for twenty years.”
The prosecutor frowned.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
The old woman reached into her bag.
And pulled out a flash drive.
“I didn’t trust them to tell the truth,” she said.
“So I kept it myself.”
The judge ordered it to be examined immediately.
And within hours… everything changed.
Because the fire was not an accident.
It was set on purpose.
And the evidence had never actually been destroyed.
May you like
It had been hidden.
By someone sitting in the courtroom right now.
