HE HAD ONE NIGHT TO SAVE EVERYONE HE LOVED… 💔

At three in the morning, the team reached Daniel’s mother’s house.
The front door stood open, and one of the windows had been shattered.
Daniel entered with Robert, calling out:
“Mom! Can you hear me?”
There was no answer.
They moved carefully toward the stairs.
Water had flooded the first floor, and pieces of furniture floated through the rooms.
Daniel climbed to the second floor.
A bedroom door stood open.
The room was empty.
Then he heard a weak voice coming from the end of the hallway.
“Daniel?”
He stopped.
He knew that voice.
He ran toward the last room and found his mother sitting on the floor beside a window, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders.
She looked pale and exhausted, but she was alive.
He rushed toward her and held her tightly.
Neither of them spoke at first.
Daniel was crying silently.
His mother placed a hand on his head, just as she had done when he was a little boy.
“I knew you’d come,” she whispered.
He pulled back slightly.
“Why didn’t you leave? Why didn’t you call me again?”
She smiled sadly.
“I tried. The phone stopped working. And by the time the water got this high, I couldn’t make it downstairs.”
Daniel looked around.
“Are you hurt?”
“No, sweetheart. I’m just tired.”
He helped her stand.
But before leaving the room, he noticed something strange.
A folded piece of paper lay near the bed.
His younger brother’s name was written on it.
Ethan.
Daniel picked it up.
The handwriting belonged to his mother.
He read the words quietly.
“If anything happens to me, tell Ethan I was never angry with him. I was only waiting for him to come home.”
Daniel felt a sharp pain in his chest.
Ethan had been distant from their family for two years after a painful argument with their mother.
He rarely spoke to her.
Daniel had never realized that she was still waiting for him to return.
He folded the paper and placed it in his pocket.
Then he picked up her bag and helped her leave the house.
When they reached the street, the sky had begun to change.
The night was still dark.
But a thin line of light appeared on the distant horizon.
Chapter Nine: The Secret His Brother Had Been Hiding