Chapter 2

The smoke surrounding the building grew thicker until it blotted out the sun.

Parents worried about their children had also spotted the billowing smoke engulfing the classrooms.

Someone had called 911. Soon, fire engines and frantic parents were crowding the school entrance.

I had already given the elderly security guard strict orders not to let anyone inside—not even the firefighters.

As more people gathered and the fire engines approached the gate, I straightened my clothes.

It was time for a fight.

When I reached the entrance, I found my son, Ethan Bennett, wrestling with the security guard while Claire shouted to the parents.

“He may be my husband, but I can’t stand by and watch this! I’m putting what’s right ahead of my own family!”

“Listen to the disgusting things Daniel Bennett has said! He doesn’t care whether your children live or die!”

“I’m a mother too. I know how you feel! Let’s get inside and open the gate for the fire engines!”

Whipped into a frenzy by her words, the parents shouted at the entrance. Several rushed the gate and tried to climb over it.

The elderly guard was no match for my almost-grown son, who worked out every day in preparation for the police academy. Ethan was seconds away from wrenching the keys from his hand.

I grabbed a megaphone from the desk by the entrance, tapped it, and roared toward the gate:

“Let’s see who dares force their way into this school!”

The crowd froze for a moment, then erupted even more violently.

Parents glared at me and shouted:

“You bastard! First you won’t let our kids out, and now you won’t let us in!”

“If anything happens to my child, you’ll pay for it!”

Before I could say anything else, Ethan approached me, disbelief written across his face.

He raised his voice just enough for the megaphone to carry it to everyone outside:

“Dad, several of my classmates have already burned to death! A teacher is trapped under a fallen whiteboard! I barely escaped. I came out to tell everyone there’s a real fire!”

“Why won’t you let the firefighters in? You’re going to get everyone killed!”

“How could you… How could you turn into someone like this?”

I looked hard at the son I had always loved and indulged. My chest ached.

I’d thought I had treated him well enough that he would never do something like this to me.

In my previous life, I had opened the gate for the fire engines. The instant their high-pressure hoses sprayed the chemistry lab, it exploded.

The blast was so powerful that it practically leveled the entire building. It killed not only every student, but also parents desperate to reach their children, firefighters who had rushed inside, and innocent people living nearby.

I survived only because I was still at the school gate, trying to clear the crowd.

When I realized what had happened, I completely fell apart. I stood on the athletic field, staring blankly at the devastation.

Then my son, who had vanished somewhere, suddenly appeared and shouted to the stunned parents:

“It’s all Daniel Bennett’s fault! That bastard principal hid the huge stockpile of sodium in the school lab from the firefighters because he didn’t want them uncovering his embezzlement!”

“All those people died because of him!”

My wife emerged too and sent every parent a video. In it, I was at home, raging at the television:

“I’ve had it with these idiots and their useless parents!”

“One day, I’m going to kill them all!”

I knew nothing about either the sodium supposedly purchased in my name for student experiments or the video of my outburst.

But by then, the furious crowd had no interest in thinking about what was true. They rushed me and tore my body apart.

Just before I died, I saw my wife and son fall into another man’s arms together.

The uproar outside snapped me out of the memory. An object thrown by one of the parents at the gate struck Ethan squarely in the head.

Watching him clutch his bleeding scalp, I gave a cold smile.

So you were part of this too.