To Torture a Duckling- Continuation

Chapter 1- written by cptnrogers

"Not a red dime or word of my work to a single one of them, you included!"

It was the night of your grandfather's eighty-fifth birthday and roughly three hours before his untimely death when you heard something that you shouldn't have.

"You are not this crazy. You would not just throw your fortune away!"

Harlan's home was a maze of passages and doorways — many of which were only privy to the children he had raised within its walls. You remembered the games of hide-and-seek, when your grandfather smiled down at you with so much conspiratorial glee that you felt like a small part in one of his mystery novel's universes, of which you were yet allowed to read.

Your favourite had been the secret bookshelves with hidden doors. The one in Harlan's lower floor study that popped open with the pull of a Henry James novel was always your favourite. Filled with hidden, priceless first-edition copies of his works. A little hide-y hole, perfectly child-sized, and just right for hiding from the brutal claws of your half-brother. Ransom never found you there. But he always found you afterwards, once the game was over. Once Harlan had turned his back.

That was where you hid now. Your hand clasped over your mouth as you pressed your back against the shelves. The perfectly child-sized space was far too tight of a squeeze for an adult-sized woman, but you hadn't thought twice about escaping there when you heard Ransom's approach.

"I'm sane for the first time in my life and I've done it! I've made the change to my will— it's done!"

You hadn't meant to pry. Never to eavesdrop.

You hadn't been in a room alone with Ransom for six years. Not since he moved himself out at eighteen years old. Your response had been merely pavlovian. Hide or run. You had chosen the former.

"I'm warning you!"

You winced at the threatening, hateful ire in Ransom's tone. You remembered the sound of it. The promise in it. Tears welled in your eyes again and you were that six year old child, scared and out of place as your father — who may well have been a stranger to you up until that morning — held you by your shoulders and walked you into his mansion in Maine. The dirt from the cemetery that now held your mother's body was still damp on your shoes.

Ransom had been twice your age and three times as evil. He hated you. You could see it in his eyes when Linda forced him to introduce himself, her own rage thinly veiled as your father simpered shamefully under her glare.

That was the moment that you knew that you would never have a home again. Your old life was buried six feet under, wrapped in silk and embalmed stiff with your mother's corpse.

Harlan had been the only member of the Thrombey family to see you; to see the scared child, brushed off her father's coat tails like a stain that he wished to erase, too nervous of her new mother to even think of stepping out of line, and too terrified of her half-brother to even allow herself a moment's relaxation.

Harlan had welcomed you in and you knew Ransom hated you all the more for it.

A door slammed shut, jerking you from your thoughts as your eyes darted sightlessly in the dark hidden room. Slowly, your hand lowered from your mouth as a shuddered breath left your lungs.

The bookshelf began to move, popping wide open as the light poured into the small nook, blinding you. A body interrupted the shaft of light; broad and tall and imposing as his arms extended over the threshold between the trap door and the rest of the bookshelf. Caging you in.