The rowhouse was silent except for the sound of shovels striking wood. Splinters cracked, nails screeched as boards were pried loose one by one. The floor opened like a wound.
Ezra Pike worked with brutal rhythm, his broad shoulders rising and falling as he tore through the planks. Sweat dripped down his brow, even in the cold. Every slam of his crowbar was final, angry.
Silas crouched nearby, his hands trembling as he held a flashlight. The beam shook across the dark hollow beneath the house, dust swirling like smoke. "It looks too shallow," he muttered. "What if someone finds it? What if—"
Cormac's glare cut him off. "Nobody's finding s***. This house been rotting twenty years. No one comes here. No one leaves here."
Naomi leaned against the cracked wall, arms folded, cigarette dangling between her fingers. "You keep saying that, Hollow. But rot don't erase history. It just hides it till somebody digs."
Ezra dropped another board with a loud crack and turned to her, eyes cold. "You talking too much again."
Naomi smirked, but her voice carried weight. "And you're not talking enough. You bury bodies and money in the same hole, it don't stay quiet forever."
Cormac ignored the tension, kneeling by the pit. He unzipped the duffel, the smell of cash and gunpowder spilling into the air. "Stack 'em in. Tight. If the house wants to groan, let it."
They lowered the bags into the darkness. Stacks of bills. A bloodied pistol. A watch ripped from a dead man's wrist. Evidence and greed, sealed in one shallow grave.
Silas swallowed hard, staring into the hole as if it stared back. "It feels wrong," he whispered. "Like the house knows."
Cormac grabbed him by the collar, dragging his face close. His hollow eyes burned. "The house don't know nothing. The streets don't care. Only thing that matters is what stays hidden. You hear me?"
Silas nodded quickly, eyes wide with fear.
Ezra dropped the last board back in place, hammer pounding nails like gunshots. Each strike echoed through the house, through their bones.
When it was done, Naomi flicked her cigarette into the corner, ashes glowing in the dark. "Secrets don't stay buried. You can cover them, but sooner or later, they scratch their way back up."
Cormac lit his own, exhaling smoke through a bitter grin. "Then let 'em scratch. We'll bury 'em again."
The floor looked whole once more—but the house groaned like it knew better.
The house was quiet, but Silas couldn't sleep. He sat in the corner of the basement, knees pulled up, staring at the patched floor like it was breathing.
Every creak made his chest tighten. Every groan in the old wood sounded like whispers.
He pressed his palms over his ears, muttering, "It's just the house. Just the house." But when he closed his eyes, he saw it—blood on the money, blood on the pistol, the dead man's eyes staring up from the floorboards like they were glass.
Naomi's words echoed in his head: Secrets don't stay buried.
He shot up suddenly, grabbing the crowbar, prying at one of the boards until it cracked. His breath came fast, frantic. "I just need to see it. Just to make sure."
The sound thundered through the house.
Within seconds, Ezra was on him, dragging him back by the collar, slamming him against the wall. His fist pressed against Silas's chest, hard enough to steal his breath.
"You losing your mind already?" Ezra growled, his voice low and lethal. "You open that floor, you open your grave."
Silas trembled, wide-eyed. "It's not right! It's—it's still here! I can feel it!"
Ezra leaned in close, his stare empty, cold. "Then feel it quiet. Or I'll make you quiet."
When Cormac appeared in the doorway, his silhouette framed by the flicker of a lighter, his voice was sharp as a blade. "If the kid cracks, we put him under the floor too."
Naomi said nothing, but the look on her face said she believed he meant it.
⸻
Chapter 3B – The Detective
Detective Rowan Keene stood in the ruined kitchen of a convenience store three blocks over, staring at the blood stains on the tiles. His partner rattled off details—robbery, clerk dead, witnesses silent—but Keene barely listened.
He crouched low, running a gloved finger across a bullet hole in the cooler door. His eyes tracked everything—the angle, the spatter, the way the chaos didn't match desperation.
"No junkie did this," he muttered. "Too fast. Too precise. This was business."
His partner frowned. "Business? Then why the overkill?"
Keene straightened, pulling a cigarette from his coat but never lighting it. He just rolled it between his fingers. "Because somebody panicked. Somebody young."
He walked toward the door, his trench coat sweeping the dusty floor. "And when somebody young panics? Secrets don't stay buried. They crack. And when they crack—" He looked back at the crime scene, his eyes narrowing. "—I find them."
Outside, the winter wind howled like it carried voices. Keene slid the unlit cigarette back into his pocket, jaw tight.
Somewhere in this neighborhood, he knew, there were floorboards hiding the truth.
And he was patient enough to wait for them to creak.