During the New Year’s party, my son was being chained in the basement, but the sound of my calm steps suddenly wiped the smile from my son-in-law’s face

In the basement, a shoe heel stood on my son’s broken knee, while above, his wife was congratulating the guests on the arrival of the New Year.

Wyatt’s screams disappeared into the walls. The concrete pillars trembled, but the music from above sounded louder. It was eleven forty-eight. The ticking of the clock, the rumbling of the old heating boiler, and my son’s heavy breathing merged with one another.

Sabrina slowly lifted her foot from his knee and looked at the cold rice placed on the plate.

“Think, Wyatt. You have one more signature left.”

“Go to hell,” he rasped. “I told my father everything.”

Sabrina laughed. Her laughter was so calm, as if she were waiting for lunch in a restaurant.

“Your father? That old truck driver who can barely manage the rent of his own apartment?”

I drove my fingernails into my fists. For twenty years everyone thought I was simply a tired man who had an old pickup and a small apartment. No one knew that I owned that truck and was the founder of “Heartland Freight Systems,” from whose warehouses hundreds of trucks went out every day.

I had hidden the money long ago, because people follow money—people who put on love like a smile. And I no longer wanted to look at false smiles.

Sabrina took a small dark bottle from the table. Its glass surface gleamed sharply in the basement light.

“You will sign by midnight,” she told Wyatt. “Then we will tell everyone that you took too much medicine.”

“Dad…” Wyatt said so quietly that only I heard him.

Sabrina tilted her head slightly.

“What did you say?”

“Nothing.”

“That’s right. Now you only move your hand.”

She went toward the stairs, but stopped at the door and looked back.

“There are ten minutes until twelve. If there is no signature, we will find your father too.”

The door closed. I came out from behind the shelf and knelt beside Wyatt. His skin was cold, and his lips had turned pale.

“Can you talk?”

“Dad, you shouldn’t be here.”

“I have been hearing your voice in my head for seven days. Now tell me, how many are there?”

“Sabrina, her father Irving, her mother Piper, and two more men. The documents are in the house. They want access to my company accounts.”

I took a small metal key from my pocket. It belonged to my deceased wife Elaine’s old bag, and I had carried it in my wallet for years. In that same bag, my phone charger and an extra memory card had also been found.

“We cannot try to escape yet,” I said. “They will think I came alone.”

“Did you come alone?”

I heard laughter coming from above. Then someone counted into a microphone.

“Ten… nine… eight…”

Wyatt gripped my hand as tightly as he had in childhood, when he was first afraid of thunder.

“Dad, if something happens to me…”

“Nothing will happen to you.”

“You can’t stop this.”

“I have already stopped it. They just don’t know yet.”

The sound of footsteps came on the stairs again. This time there were several people. I put the phone on the shelf, without stopping the recording, and returned to the dark corner. The door opened. Irving entered with a heavy folder in his hand. Sabrina stood behind him, holding a pen.

Irving put the folder on the table and looked down at Wyatt.

“It’s time, son-in-law. Sign, or we will make your hand hold the pen ourselves…”

Irving brought the pen close to Wyatt’s face and enclosed his jaw with his fingers. The pen tip was so close to his eye that I instinctively held my breath.

“You will sign,” he said. “If not, Sabrina will take care of your other knee too.”

“I won’t sign.”

“Then your father will die together with you.”

Sabrina turned her head toward my side. It was as if she could see me through the wall. I froze in the shadow of the shelf, while the phone in my pocket continued recording. The screen showed 23:54.

Wyatt suddenly chuckled. His voice was broken, but it caused irritation on Sabrina’s face.

“What are you laughing at?” she asked.

“My father is much smarter than you.”

“Your father is old and poor.”

“That’s what you think.”

Irving struck the pen against the table.

“Enough. Hold his hand.”

One of the men outside the door whispered that the guests were asking where Wyatt was. Sabrina immediately restored a smile to her face.

“Tell them he is in the bathroom,” she said. “He is drunk and became ill.”

“What if someone comes downstairs?”

“No one will come down. Everyone depends on me.”

I recorded this sentence. Then another one. And another one. I did not shout, because I knew that loud courage sometimes gives the enemy a warning. My calmness was an invisible trap for them.

Wyatt put his hand on the folder, but immediately pulled it back.

“Read it first,” I told Irving. “It says that after my property is sold, all the money will go into Sabrina’s account.”

Irving fell silent for a moment.

“You no longer need to read.”

“No, you do. Maybe for the first time you will understand that your daughter is selling you too.”

Sabrina’s eyes changed.

“Irving, press down on his hand.”

Irving took Wyatt’s wrist. At that moment, the sound of a glass breaking came from above. Everyone turned toward the door for one second. I quickly bent down and dropped the small key onto the floor at Irving’s feet.

He did not notice it. Sabrina did.

I followed her gaze. The key lay directly beside the metal door through which technicians had made an additional exit from the basement several years earlier. The door locked from the outside, but the key was kept right there, in the old electrical box.

Sabrina slowly bent down to pick it up.

“Whose is this?” she asked.

I stood behind the shelf and for the first time felt my back become wet with sweat. The red recording mark on the phone was still shining. One movement and they would lose everything. A second movement and I would fall into their hands.

Sabrina picked up the key, then looked at Wyatt.

“Did you bring someone here?”

Wyatt answered nothing.

“Irving, search the basement.”

Irving began opening the cabinets in the room. The plank doors creaked. I could no longer retreat, because my shoe touched an old iron box and made a low sound.

Sabrina immediately turned her head.

“Who is there?”

The man took one step onto the stairs. I reached for the phone, but at that moment the sound of bells came from above. Midnight had arrived. The guests were shouting, glasses were striking one another, and the whole house was lit by the light of fireworks.

Sabrina said in a whisper:

“If you really are here, come out. I want you to see with your own eyes how you lose both your son and everything…”

After Sabrina’s words, such silence fell in the basement that I felt every rumble of the boiler. I slowly came out from behind the shelf. Irving immediately reached toward his pocket, but I had already pointed the phone at his man.

“Don’t move your hand,” I told him. “Everything is recorded.”

The key fell from Sabrina’s hand. Its metallic sound rang sharply on the concrete.

“Abraham…” she whispered.

“Yes. The poor old man whose murder you were planning.”

Irving turned pale.

“This is a misunderstanding.”

“Then explain to us why my son is chained.”

Wyatt leaned his head against the wall.

“Dad, don’t believe her. They want the documents.”

Sabrina tried to laugh, but her voice cracked.

“Wyatt is ill. He was taking the medicines himself. We were only helping.”

I raised the phone and played the recorded voice. Sabrina’s words rang out again in the basement: “You will sign by midnight, then we will tell everyone that you took too much medicine.” Then Irving’s voice: “Hold his hand.” Then Sabrina’s calm laughter.

Piper stopped on the stairs. She was wearing the expensive coat that had once belonged to Elaine. A small ivory pendant hung at her neck; Elaine wore it every winter.

“This recording is illegal,” Piper said.

“Then explain to the police why you are wearing a dead woman’s coat on the night you are killing her son.”

Sabrina suddenly lunged toward me. Irving stopped her with his hand.

“Stop!” he shouted. “He planned all this for us.”

“No,” I said. “You planned it. I only came.”

I took a document from my pocket and handed it to Irving. He came two steps toward me, read it, and his face changed.

“This is impossible.”

“No. This is the result of an independent audit. I never had a share in Wyatt’s companies. Sabrina cannot manage any of the accounts. You spent three weeks preparing to sell property that belongs neither to your son nor to you.”

Sabrina looked at Wyatt.

“You knew?”

“I knew that Dad checked everything,” he answered. “I didn’t know you would go this far.”

I then played a second recording from the phone. In it, Sabrina explained to two men how they should leave an empty bottle in the basement and tell the doctor that Wyatt had been taking drugs for several days.

Piper covered her face with both hands.

“Sabrina, what were you doing?”

“Shut up, Mom!”

At that moment, the sound of a siren came from outside. I had sent a message to the security service two hours earlier, and they had also called the police. Officers appeared at the stairs. Irving raised his hands, while Sabrina stepped back.

But before they removed the chain from Wyatt, my phone rang again. An unknown number appeared on the screen. A woman’s whisper could be heard on the other end of the line.

“Mr. Yates, if you tell the police everything now, your son still will not survive. We know where the other person is, the one who has left your name…”