HOW YOU LIKE THAT | JENLISA

Chapter 53

Jennie

They had planned to kill Lisa.

Have I heard them correctly? But why would they want their own sibling dead?

I was definitely missing something here.

I stayed hidden inside the closet while Sorn checked out the room. I could see her shiny green pumps from a small opening. She moved around in the room. I could hear the shuffling. I didn't even move an inch. My breathing had turned heavy. I pressed my hand to my mouth.

I was married into this family, and even if I'd felt forced to at first, I'd accepted my fate because of Lisa, because I loved her, but I didn't have any intention of living my entire life hiding from this family that was supposed to be my family now.

Yeah, I was a part of this screwed up family. It was the bitter truth.

Nichkhun followed Sorn into the room and they spoke in hushed voices, looking around in the darkened room.

Just then, my back hit the wooden wall and something behind me moved.

Meeeoowww!!

The fat Himalayan cat Lulu jumped from a top shelf and went to brush herself against Sorn's legs.

"Aww, so it was you who was making those sounds." Sorn picked the fluffy cat up into her arms. "Are you hungry, baby?" she cooed.

Thankfully, they decided that the cat was making the ruckus and left the room, while closing the door behind them. I stayed put for a few minutes in case they were still there, listening against the door. I didn't want to get into trouble.

If Nichkhun and Sorn wanted to plot Lisa's murder, why would they be so careless and leave the door open? There were a lot of servants in the house who would eavesdrop, and word would certainly get out.

Unless...

They were trying to bait me with it.

I pushed the inner closet's panelling a little and noticed a small gap between them. I pushed it harder and the entire thing just fell apart. There was a tunnel ahead of me, much similar to the one that I'd been to before.

This mansion had a lot of secret tunnels and passageways, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise to me, but something about this darkened passage made little sense.

The entry to it was installed through the old closet, which had honestly looked out of place in the vast room. There was old furniture littering around the room, some vintage chairs, tables carved out of expensive wood, and a four-poster bed fit for a king. The room was well maintained as it was being dusted and cleaned by a house staff so if a person stumbled upon this room, they wouldn't guess the inner panelling of the closet led somewhere. It was meant to look like any other old furniture. The secret rooms or passages hid in plain sight.

I stepped out from the closet and onto the narrow dingy passage that was pitch black. With shaky hands, I pulled out my phone and used its flashlight to navigate my way through it.

An unsettling feeling crept into my skin. I knew that I was making the same huge mistake I'd done before by walking right into dangerous territory. If I was any smarter, I should have turned and walked back like I hadn't noticed this, but I couldn't. Maybe it was the curiosity burning like a flame inside me. I wanted to play Sherlock Holmes. Or maybe it was the thrill to dig deeper into the Manoban family's dirty secrets.

The passage turned narrower and narrower, with dirt matted on the floor. The walls once had some nice wallpaper that was now yellow and peeling. You wouldn't even guess that this place was inside the mansion. It was so dank and dirty.

At the end of the tunnel, there was a steep set of stairs. I almost lost my footing. I wondered if one of the insane Manoban ancestors who had this built, wanted unsuspecting people to run down this passage and fall down these stairs, possibly breaking their necks and end up dead.

When I took the stairs down, it hit a strange dead end. The stairs just ended with a wall, and nothing after that. The Manoban family were insane, but they were also trolls.

I climbed back up and started making my way towards the entrance that I'd come from. I needed to get back to Lisa before she noticed that I was gone. She would usually wreaked havoc if she couldn't find me.

I almost passed through when in my peripheral vision; I saw a tiny hole in the wall. I wouldn't have noticed it in the dark if I hadn't been so vigilant.

I peeped through it.

There were four people in the room, seated on a wooden chair, all of them staring in four different directions, facing the inner circle. I poked the hole in the wall, and the cement began falling off. That's all I needed to get a clearer view.

The people were bound, and the chairs were kept in the middle of large red pentagrams. The walls had similar symbols painted on them, with each wall representing the person seated in front of it.

These weren't even people. These were dead, decaying bodies, preserved like they were still alive.

Each of their foreheads were marked by a symbol. I didn't recognise the other bodies, but I knew one of them.

Taehyung the stable boy that Lisa had killed and I'd helped her to bury the body.

Someone knew what we'd done and had dug up the body from the ground. The body that had a missing head because Lisa had smashed it. Taehyung's head was replaced by a goat's head, and it was stitched over the body's torso.

I fought back the urge to hurl up my breakfast. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach, but I continued to watch.

Tiny candles were lit in each of the circles.

I needed to leave right now, before I got caught. I backed away from the wall and sneaked back into the wardrobe. Still shaking, I placed the wooden panelling back, and it clicked right into place.