Reborn In a Murderer’s Embrace

Chapter 140

My soul quaked with a deep–rooted fear of the orphanage, I was terrified because it was here that I had died.

Thankfully, when Eric took me, we went to the residential wing on the eastern side of the orphanage.

“Maybe the murderer just wanted to scare Colin and Carter, but they didn’t anticipate the fire getting out of hand. The whole dormitory was engulfed. That year, nineteen kids died in the orphanage. Nineteen, apart from Colin and Carter, mostly little seven or eight–year–olds.”

I knew that Colin and Carter were just back for some annual celebration, a coming–of–age ceremony for the kids around their age who had been adopted out.

And those who perished were the ones left behind, the ones never chosen by a family. Such innocent lives were lost.

“We found him in a room choked with thick smoke, gasping for air.” Eric pushed open the charred door; its hinges creaked in protest.

I stood rigid at the doorway, trembling uncontrollably with fear I couldn’t explain.

The room was sparse, beds reduced to mere frames, walls blackened by the heavy smoke.

years, the claw marks of

primal struggle to

hand flew to my mouth as I crouched on the floor, my stomach churning with

despair Colin

budge, their bodies seared by flames, the smoke nearly devouring

the walls spoke silently of their final, desperate

sooner?” I choked out, my heart sinking into that pit of despair. “That day, the Langley family faced a great tragedy as well. On the day of the orphanage fire, Mr. Ethan, Mr. Brendan’s most favored son and heir to the Langley Group, died in a car accident along with his wife and another son. Mr. Brendan was lost in grief, and the Langley family was shrouded in sorrow. Everyone forgot that Mr. Caleb never returned from the

hoarse, his eyes rimmed with red. “When Mr. Caleb woke up, he went mad. He was in a frenzy, Insisted on returning to the orphanage, and refused to leave with anyone, saying he was waiting for someone that he was told to wait there, and he

12-07

Chapter 140

post–traumatic stress, which, with patient guidance and support from his family, he might have overcome. But with Mr. Ethan

gone

scandal might

my eyes wide with shock.

locked away