Chapter 274: Picking Up the Pieces
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The week following everything that went down didn’t feel like a break or a chance to catch my breath at all. If anything, it seemed like the world had cranked up the volume, pushing harder and faster, almost like it had been waiting for the moment our lives would crack open to pour in.
Oakfield Mansion, which used to feel overly quiet and stifling in its perfection, transformed into something completely different. The silence that used to linger in its polished halls was gone, replaced by a constant clamor that never really settled into something I recognized.
It started outside.
Every morning, even before I pulled back the curtains, I could hear them. The distant hum of voices overlapping, the occasional shout, and the sharp clicks of cameras going off like insects right outside the gates. By the second day, the crowd had swelled. By the fourth, it felt like the whole city had decided our front driveway was the new hotspot.
Reporters, photographers, and people who openly displayed their curiosity pressed against the gates, bundled against the chill, waiting for any sign of life inside the mansion, as if we were some kind of live show they’d paid to see.
The first time I tried to leave for school three days after Keith’s arrest, I only got six steps out the front door before I stopped in my tracks.
As soon as the gates cracked open, the noise surged forward, voices rising together.
"Noah Valentine! Is it true you and Adrien Fellwere the one who exposed your stepfather?"
"Did you know about the murders beforehand?"
"Are you and Adrien Fell still living together?"
The questions came at me so fast I couldn’t even think straight, flashes of lights hitting my face as cameras captured every look I didn’t have time to mask. Someone thrust a microphone close to me while another voice broke through louder than the rest.