All Chapters of my girlfriend's Dad: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

Lily hadn’t slept. She sat cross-legged on her bed, the photo still open on her phone, every detail burned into her brain. The light under her father’s den door had gone out hours ago; Eli’s door remained closed and silent. The whole house felt like a trap. By morning, her phone buzzed again. Same number. You have one hour. No punctuation. No context. No demand attached. She stared at it until her chest hurt. Her first instinct was to delete it, pretend it never happened. Her second was to scream. Instead, she got up, went straight to Eli’s room, and shut the door behind her. Eli sat up instantly, eyes bloodshot. He hadn’t slept either. One look at her face, and he knew. “What happened?” he asked, voice low, urgent. Lily handed him the phone without a word. He read the messages, jaw tightening. “Who the hell—” “I don’t know,” she said, cutting him off, voice sharp with panic. “But they saw. Last night. They saw.” Eli swore under his breath, dragging both hands through his

The sound of the deadbolt sliding home should have been comforting. It wasn’t. It just made the house feel like a cage. Lily paced the living room, her bare feet silent on the wood floor, phone in her hand like it might bite. Eli sat on the arm of the couch, eyes fixed on the window, tracking nothing and everything. “What did he say?” Eli asked finally. “He didn’t,” Lily said, still pacing. “Just told me to lock up. He sounded… off.” “Off how?” “Like when he gets that voice,” she said, stopping mid-step. “The one he uses when he’s already in the fight and doesn’t want to tell you about it.” Eli frowned. “That’s not good.” “No,” she agreed, resuming her pacing. “That’s really not good.” The house was quiet except for the tick of the kitchen clock and the occasional creak of the old beams adjusting to the cool morning. It should have felt safe. Instead, every sound felt like a warning. Eli checked his phone again, even though he knew no new messages had come. “Whoeve

The house had never felt so alive in its silence. Every creak of the old wood, every faint hum of rain against glass, became amplified in the dark. Eli stood frozen, his back pressed against the edge of the sofa. The faint glow from outside barely reached the living room, carving shadows into strange, unrecognizable shapes. Cole moved first. “Stay here,” he whispered, hand slipping to the holster at his hip. “No,” Damian said quietly. His voice was low, controlled, but Eli could hear the current of tension running under it. “They want us to split up. That’s the game.” Lily’s whisper trembled from the staircase. “There’s someone *in* the house?” “Quiet,” Damian murmured. A floorboard groaned again — this time from deeper down the hall, near the study. Cole raised his gun and took a slow step toward the noise, the faint beam of his flashlight cutting through the dark like a blade. Dust motes shimmered in the narrow light, then disappeared as he turned the corner. Seconds

The rain had stopped hours ago, but the sound of it still lingered — a phantom rhythm that refused to die. Outside, the Hale mansion stood in quiet defiance of the night it had just survived. The drive was littered with fallen leaves and the faint glimmer of puddles, while the faintest curl of mist hung low, catching the first slice of dawn.Inside, silence ruled — the uneasy kind that follows chaos.Eli woke to the sound of footsteps somewhere down the hall. For a few seconds, he lay still, staring at the ceiling, the events of the night replaying like a half-remembered nightmare: the storm, the blackout, the intrusion, the mask on the screen.Then came the memory of Damian’s voice — low, commanding, calm even in danger — and Eli felt the echo of that presence wrap around him again like invisible gravity.He got up, pulled on a shirt, and made his way toward the sound.⸻In the study, Damian stood by the tall window, one ha

Darkness swallowed the room. The hum of the generators cut out mid-breath, leaving only rain hammering the roof. For three heartbeats there was nothing—no light, no sound, not even the usual static in Eli’s earpiece.Then a whisper slid into the silence.“Move, Eli.”He froze. The voice wasn’t coming from the loudspeakers this time; it was threaded directly into his comm.“The tower. You know which one.”Eli spun toward the table where the device sat. Its blue pulse had turned steady red, a single unblinking eye.“Damian!” he called.No reply. Somewhere deeper in the building, someone shouted orders—Cole, probably—but the words were lost in the screech of a rebooting fuse box.“He can’t hear you,” Carter’s voice said. “Power surge knocked his channel. You have five minutes before they get it back.”Eli’s pulse thudded in his throat. “Why are you doing this?”“Because you still don’t know the truth. The files you opened were only the surface. I can show you the rest—if you come alone.”