CHAPTER 2: THE SOUND BENEATH THE SATIN

The funeral hall looked designed for obedience.

Cream walls.

Polished marble floors.

White flower arrangements rising beside the aisle.

A dark wooden casket with gold handles moving slowly toward the front beneath the careful hands of pallbearers.

Mourners in expensive black clothing standing in respectful silence.

And beside the casket, Celeste Halden in a black off-shoulder funeral dress, pearl necklace at her throat, dark hair twisted into a tight bun, carrying a framed portrait of her husband with the controlled sorrow of a woman performing widowhood for exactly the right audience.

The doors burst open before the moment could settle.

Luke rushed in so fast several mourners stepped back in shock.

His face was pale. His hair was disordered. His tie hung loose as if he had dressed while running. But nothing in him looked careless.

Everything looked desperate.

“Stop the coffin!” he shouted.

The pallbearers froze instinctively.

The wheels of the casket locked against the marble.

The hall, already quiet, became suffocatingly still.

Celeste turned first.

For one instant, Luke saw something in her face that none of the mourners would have recognized.

Not grief.

Not outrage.

Fear.

Then it vanished beneath cold fury.

“What are you doing?” she snapped.

Luke did not answer her.

He reached the casket, dropped to his knees beside it, and gripped one gold handle with both hands as if anchoring himself to the last piece of truth in the room.

“Don’t move it,” he said, breathless. “Don’t let them move it.”

Murmurs broke out among the mourners.

Someone cursed quietly.

A man near the flowers demanded security.

Celeste stepped toward Luke and seized his shoulder.

“You’re embarrassing this family,” she hissed.

Luke looked up at her, and the expression in his eyes made her loosen her grip.

It was not the look of a hysterical intruder.

It was the look of a man who already knew something terrible.

Then he placed one trembling hand flat against the side of the casket.

At first, the room heard nothing.

Luke held his breath.

So did everyone else, though most of them did not realize they were doing it.

Then it came.

A faint knock.

Small.

Weak.

But unmistakable.

Three short impacts from inside the dark wood.

The sound did not echo loudly. It didn’t need to. It moved through the room like a blade.

Celeste’s face changed instantly.

The pallbearers stepped back.

The mourners stopped breathing.

Luke closed his eyes for one moment, pain and relief colliding together, then whispered,

“He’s still alive.”

No one in the hall could hide from the meaning anymore.

A woman near the front covered her mouth.

One of the pallbearers swore under his breath.

A man in a dark suit backed away from the casket as if it had become haunted.

“It’s impossible,” Celeste whispered.

But her voice had collapsed.

Luke stood halfway, still holding the casket.

“Open it.”

“No,” Celeste said immediately, too fast. “Absolutely not.”

That was the second thing that damned her.

Because only a guilty woman would hear knocking from inside her husband’s coffin and refuse to open it.

Luke turned to the mourners.

“If anyone in this room still has a conscience, help me open it.”

The pallbearers looked from Celeste to Luke to the casket.

They were paid men, not family. Paid men have a way of recognizing the moment money stops protecting evil.

One of them stepped forward.

Then another.

Celeste backed up a fraction.

“Don’t you dare,” she said, but now there was no authority left in it.

Only panic.

Together, Luke and the pallbearers loosened the top latch and lifted the casket lid.

Inside, beneath part of the loosened satin lining, Victor Halden lay pale and terrified.

His eyes were wide open.

His mouth was covered with black tape.

His breathing was shallow, desperate, and real.

The hall erupted—not into screams, but into the broken noise of rich people realizing they have been standing inside attempted murder.

Luke reached in first.

“Sir,” he said, voice shaking, “I’ve got you.”

Victor’s eyes found him.

And the fear in them confirmed everything.

He had known exactly what was happening.

He had been awake long enough to understand he was being buried alive.

Celeste stumbled backward.

The portrait frame slipped in her hands.