Page 19

The estate is still when I wake up. That strange, aching stillness of a too-early morning where dawn hasn’t fully broken, but the world isn’t black anymore either.

It’s that blue-gray space in between, where everything looks haunted and too quiet.

My head throbs with a dull, persistent ache.

Not sharp like a hangover, but foggy, like a load pressing behind my eyes.

The wine from last night lingers in my system, sour and warm, a slow poison I welcomed like an old friend.

My phone buzzes on the nightstand, the screen lighting up in the semi-dark. I grab it without thinking. Messages. Notifications. God, there are too many. Zara. Club invites. A group selfie of girls I barely know anymore, all with glittery eyes, red lips, and captions like: Last night was a blurrrr.

I stare at it blankly, my thumb hovering over the screen. Then, I lock it. I can’t deal with their noise right now. I can’t even deal with Zara’s text, sweet and worried, which says, You okay? Missed you so much last night.

Instead, I listen for a voice that no longer exists.

And then I hear it. I know it’s not real, but I replay it in my memories.

My mother’s laughter, echoing and disjointed, like it’s bouncing off the inside of my skull.

I sit up sharply, my breath catching in my throat.

The room is still, empty, and unwelcoming. But the sound lingers, faint and cruel.

Drawn by instinct, or maybe just desperation, I pull on a hoodie over my tank top, grab my phone, and pad barefoot down the hall. The house creaks beneath my feet. It always does, like it remembers each one of my ancestors who walked these floors.

The attic door groans when I push it open. Dust rushes down in little clouds, making me cough. The staircase is narrow, and it gets cooler the higher I climb. By the time I reach the top, goosebumps cover my arms beneath my hoodie.

The attic is a cathedral of shadows. Light filters in through the slatted windows, slicing through dust like blades. Everything is covered in old sheets, pale shrouds over forgotten furniture. It smells like cedar and time. I haven’t been up here since… God, since before she died. Maybe longer.

I don’t know what I’m looking for until I see it.

Behind two old trunks, there’s a cedar chest. It’s beautiful and carved with delicate rose patterns. I remember this. It once sat at the foot of her bed, always locked and always off-limits.

I kneel before it with hesitating fingers.

The key, if I remember right, was hidden in the back of her music box—a delicate silver piece I couldn’t bear to open after the funeral. I didn’t want to hear the song. I didn’t want to know what else she left behind.

But now?

Now, I have to know. I woke up craving for more of her. Anything that might help me understand what happened. It’s been nagging at me for months now, and I can’t wait any longer.

I sprint back to my room, grab the box from my dresser, and gently open it. Dust greets me until I shift the lining and feel the smooth touch of metal. A small brass key, ornate, old-fashioned.

Back in the attic, I kneel again, my heart hammering. The key slides in perfectly, and with a soft click, the lock releases.

Inside, there are bundles of hand-tied letters, the pages yellowed with time. Then, another journal and a small cassette tape labeled in tight, shaky handwriting: Listen Alone.

I swallow hard, reaching for the cassette, when suddenly, the memory from last night’s phone call hits like a punch.

“I don’t know exactly what it is,” Elijah had said. His voice was lower than I remembered, but it still carried the same calm I used to crave. “But there’s a connection between Silas and your mother.”

“What kind of connection?” I’d asked, curling up on the window seat with my legs tucked under me as I stared at the estate’s empty courtyard.

“I’m not sure. Yet. But I dug into Silas’s file. And let’s just say… he’s not exactly the kind of man your father hired off a resume.”

“Shocker.”

“Lyra, I need you to be careful. I asked some people I shouldn’t have and might’ve rattled some cages.”

“You’re saying they know you’re sniffing around.”

“I’m saying if you’re going to confront him, don’t do it alone. He’s a dangerous man. But don’t trust your father to have your back. They’ve known each other for years and have worked together before. I don’t know the details, but if he’s a man your father trusts, then he can’t be trusted.”

I’d been silent then because I already knew that. Elijah had apologized after and said he wouldn’t have dug so deep if he knew what it would trigger.

But it was too late.

Now, I’m staring down at my mother’s journal, my hands shaking as I open it.

The pages are lined with sketches. Notes. Lyrics. But one name stands out to me from the margins.

Silas Creed.

He was there. Somehow, he was part of her story. And I never knew.

My breath catches as I reach for the cassette, nestled deep between folds of silk at the bottom of the chest.

It’s like someone tried to hide it. Probably my mother.

I run my fingers over the label: Listen Alone.

And I know, in that moment, nothing is ever going to be the same again.

The stairs to the nursery creak like they’ve been holding their breath for years.

I grip the railing tighter, my bare feet silent on the chilled wooden steps.

It’s barely dawn outside, with just a pale ribbon of light bleeding through the eastern windows.

The rest of the estate is still shrouded in that blue-gray quiet that belongs to ghosts.

The nursery door groans when I push it open, revealing a room locked in time.

Dust blankets everything: old plush toys, a toppled rocking horse, the faded pastel wallpaper peeling in soft curls.

In the corner sits my crib. It’s not a sleek designer one but a sturdy wooden cage with hand-painted flowers, now cracked and flaking.

It smells like cedar and mildew and something long dead.

I don’t know why I came here.

Maybe because this is the last room in the house untouched by my current life, or maybe because trauma has a scent, and it brought me here by the throat.

The cassette in my hand feels heavier than it should, like it knows something I don’t, and it’s been waiting to unravel.

I spot an old Fisher-Price player on the shelf, miraculously intact beneath a blanket of dust. I pull it down, wipe it off with the sleeve of my hoodie, and slide the tape in with a click that sounds too loud for a room this quiet.

I hesitate, my thumb hovering over the play button like it’s a detonator.

Then I press it. There’s static and a sharp crackle. And then her voice comes through.

Soft and lyrical. The voice that used to sing me lullabies through fevers and night terrors. But now it’s fractured, like she’s speaking from a place between worlds.

“They told me I was imagining things. That the cameras were for my protection.”

I freeze. The static flutters in and out, warping her voice like a warped lullaby. My chest squeezes.

“But protection feels like chains. And chains feel like love if you’re tired enough.”

I clutch my chest.

Those words hit harder than they should.

I bite my bottom lip until I taste blood, trying to stay still, trying not to crumble.

She goes on about my father and her frustrations that I was never aware of. I listen in a daze until she says, “The man your father trusts… Creed… he doesn’t blink. He watches.”

My breath catches. My hand shoots to my mouth, my fingers trembling. There’s a metallic ringing in my ears now. Like my pulse is screaming.

She said his name.

She knew him.

All this time, this attachment I couldn’t explain, this dread lodged beneath my ribs, it wasn’t just mine. It was inherited.

It was fucking generational.

“I hope you never meet him. Because if you do, you’ll know things are not okay.”

And then nothing.

No click. No ending jingle. Just the sound of my own ragged breathing. What does that mean? Can I trust him or not?

“No… no… wait. What? I don’t understand…” I can barely speak. Who am I even talking to?

The room spins. I sit down hard on the floor with my knees pulled to my chest. My fingers curl into the frayed carpet. I want to scream. I want to claw something. But all I can do is whisper…

“But I have already met him.”

I already have. And he’s in the goddamn walls. In the shadows. In my fucking bloodstream now.

The video doesn’t end like a story. It ends like a warning.

And suddenly, every time he touched me, every time his breath slid too close to my skin, and every time he cornered me against a wall or said something that made me tremble, I now know it wasn’t new.

It was a ritual. One that I was born into.

I stay there for what feels like hours. Just me, the ghost of my mother’s voice, and the knowledge that nothing, absolutely nothing , in this house is what it seems.

The man I thought I could outplay? He already beat her.

And now he’s playing a new game. With me. I just don’t know if I’m his partner or prey in this game.

The sky outside the nursery windows has cracked open into pale blue.

Dawn bleeds into the horizon in streaks of lavender and bruised gold.

My fingers tremble as I shut off the tape, the machine clicking with finality like a judge’s gavel.

My mother’s voice still echoes in my skull, trailing down my back like the ghost of a nightmare that didn’t end when I woke up.

I clutch my phone and glance at the lock screen. Saturday. Of fucking course.

It means he’s here.

Evander Vane, my father, lord of steel and concrete, likes to play the family man on the first weekend of the month.

He spends the rest of the month holed up in his city office, making deals that choke the skyline and pretending he doesn’t have blood on his hands.

But the month’s first weekend? He’s up before the goddamn sun, running laps around the estate like some alpha wolf maintaining dominance.

I don’t bother changing. I storm down the grand staircase in paint-stained sweats and fury. My slippers slam against marble, the journal clutched to me like a weapon. I pass his butler, who flew in with him, and he flinches. Good. Let them fear me.

My father’s study door is open. He’s inside, already dressed in his weekend uniform of tailored joggers and a black long-sleeve, barefoot like some kind of Zen warlord.

His back is to me, his hands cradling a crystal tumbler of something dark.

The room smells like cedar, old books, and dominance.

Shelves line the walls, floor-to-ceiling, and the giant oak desk stands like a throne.

I throw the journal onto it.

“Why is Silas’s name in this?”

He doesn’t turn around. He doesn’t even react, just sips on his drink.

“It’s a common name,” he says.

“And yet you hired that one.”

He finally turns. His face is worn, the dark circles under his eyes like bruises he’s too proud to cover. But the lie is already sitting on his tongue.

“I hired him because he’s the best.”

“The best at what? Surveillance? Violence? Scaring your daughter shitless in the name of security?”

He exhales slowly. “You’re not supposed to know everything, Lyra.”

“Bullshit. Don’t feed me that patriarchal cloak-and-dagger crap. I’m not ten.”

Evander sets the glass down with a hard clink. “You think you know danger because you grew up in this house. Well, you don’t.”

“And you think hiring a man mentioned in Mom’s journal is just a coincidence?”

That hits. His eyes give him away for a second. And I see it. I see the guilt, slick and oily beneath the surface.

“You leave your mother out of this.”

I lean forward. “She’s already in it.”

His fingers curl on the desk. “Your mother was sick.”

“She had cancer, yeah. That’s the story. Closed casket, your orders. You never let me see her.”

“It was her wish,” he snaps. A little too quickly.

“You mean it was your control,” I bite back.

His unresponsiveness says everything. But I don’t tell him about the tape. Not yet. That’s my card. My insurance.

“You hired a man she feared,” I whisper. “You invited that man into this house. Into my room.”

Evander rubs a hand over his face. For a moment, he looks old. Tired. But not sorry.

“Silas Creed is a good man,” he mutters.

I laugh. Dry. Mean. “He’s a fucking menace.”

“He’s saved more lives than you know.”

“And destroyed how many?”

We stare at each other like titans at war.

“Be careful, Lyra,” he says, quiet and deadly. “Some truths cost more than they’re worth.”

I smirk. “Then it’s a good thing I’m rich.”

I spin around and walk out.

But not before I see it—that touch of fear in his eyes. It’s clearly not for me, but for what I might uncover next.

Well, two can play this game. Silas thinks he can play puppet master with strings made of secrets. Fine. Let’s see how he handles a little performance of my own.

I don’t go looking for him. I don’t scream, accuse, or throw anything, at least not yet. Instead, I climb the stairs with the calm precision of a woman with a plan. My room is exactly as I left it: a mess disguised in velvet and sunlight. But today, there’s purpose in the mess.

I shove open my closet doors, my fingers brushing over hangers and satin until I find it tucked all the way in the back behind piles of designer regrets. The red dress.

It once belonged to my mother. It’s soft, and it’s vintage.

It smells faintly of old perfume and defiance.

I have a picture of her in it while she was in Paris, on the trip she never made her way back from.

The dress was sent to me by my aunt, the one I’ve never really talked to, but I know she exists and cares.

I strip down slowly, tossing every barrier between me and that fabric onto the floor. My skin is fully bare, my intent sharpened like a knife. I slide the dress over my shoulders and feel it slip against me like it remembers a woman who used to wear it with the same don’t-fuck-with-me attitude.

No jewelry. No shoes. Just that dress and a storm in my veins.

I move to my dresser and pull open the hidden drawer beneath the makeup tray. My fingers curl around the sleek, black, and almost elegant vibrator. The way Silas watches, the way he always thinks he’s two steps ahead? Let’s see how composed he stays when the show’s not choreographed by him.

I need to let this frustration out somehow, and after what that man did to me last night, leaving me aching, unsatisfied, and burning for more, this doesn’t even scratch the surface of revenge.

I walk to the center of the room and glance at the tiny black dot nestled in the ceiling corner.

“Hope you’re paying attention, Creed,” I whisper, my voice like smoke. “Because this one’s for you.”

I don’t break eye contact with the camera. Not once. I don’t have to say it again.

He’ll see. And that’s the point.