Chapter 3
We stayed in the bridal suite because leaving the mansion without knowing who controlled the roads felt like walking into a trap with the lights on.
Roman checked the passage first. He returned with dust on one knee and a cut across the back of his hand. I noticed the blood before he noticed me noticing it.
“Was the door locked from the other side?” I asked.
“No.”
“Did you find Evelyn's trail?”
“Only the bracelet.”
“Then she didn't leave through the front.”
“No.”
He sat at the small writing desk while I spread the ledger page beneath the candle. The columns were cramped and faded. Most of the names had been scratched through, but one line remained legible.
V. VALE — 18 OCTOBER — NORTH GATE.
The ink had bled around the surname. I leaned closer.
“Vale,” I said.
Roman's head lifted.
“You know that name.”
“Adrian.”
“Adrian Vale.”
He didn't answer.
The mansion's distant alarms had stopped. In their place came the muted sounds of movement beyond the walls—footsteps, radios, doors opening and shutting. The people left in the house were organizing themselves around the disaster. No one had come for us.
I held the paper toward him. “Why is his name on a harbor ledger?”
“I don't know.”
“You said that too quickly.”
“I said it because I don't.”
“Then tell me what you do know.”
Roman looked toward the closed door. “Adrian was ejected from the reception earlier.”
“I saw that.”
“He humiliated your mother.”
“I saw that, too.”
“What you didn't see was what he was carrying.”
I waited.
“A folder.”
“What's in it?”
“I don't know.”
“You didn't search him?”
“I had security escort him out.”
“After you put him out, did you search him?”
Roman's jaw worked once. “No.”
I folded the page in half. “You keep giving me pieces after they become dangerous.”
“I was trying to keep the wedding from turning into an investigation.”
“It stopped being a wedding when someone fired into the windows.”
His gaze dropped to the pendant in my hand. “I thought if I could get you out before the past reached you, you wouldn't have to carry it.”
“I've carried it since I was a child.”
He looked up.
The sentence had exposed more than I meant to show. I rubbed my thumb over the old scar on my shoulder. I didn't remember the fire clearly. I remembered heat, a white ceiling, and my mother refusing to let me look in a mirror. After that, the story had always been simple: an accident, an old injury, nothing worth discussing.
The shape inside the scar had never been part of the story.
Roman took a folded document from inside his jacket.
I watched him place it on the desk.
“You had another page.”
“I should have shown you.”
“Should have?”
“It was in my possession before tonight.”
I unfolded it. The paper was thinner than the ledger page and stamped with a faded harbor seal. Halfway down, a line had been blacked out by hand. Beneath the ink, I could make out a date: October 18.
The same date.
At the bottom, someone had written one word.
WHITMORE.
My mother had kept her name. The paper had not.
“Why hide this?” I asked.
“I didn't hide it from you.”
“You kept it in your jacket.”
“I kept it because I didn't know who to trust.”
“You mean you didn't trust me.”
“I mean I didn't trust anyone.”
The answer was honest enough to hurt.
A car engine passed outside the mansion, tires hissing over the wet drive. I went to the window and pulled the curtain back by an inch. Black ocean beyond the glass. Security lights sweeping the grounds. No sign of my mother.
The phone buzzed again.
A second message appeared.
NO ROMAN. NO POLICE. COME BEFORE MIDNIGHT.
Roman read it over my shoulder, then reached for my wrist.
I stepped back.
His hand fell.
“I said no more of that,” I told him.
“I wasn't going to hurt you.”
“I know. That isn't the point.”
His breathing changed. He looked toward the door, then at the message, then back at me.
“What are you going to do?”
“Find out why Evelyn's name is on that page.”
“By meeting someone who has her?”
“Not alone.”
“Clara—”
“No.” I set the pendant and both documents on the desk. “You don't get to decide where I go because you're afraid. You can help me, or you can stay here and protect the walls.”
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
Then Roman nodded.
“Tell me what you need.”
It was the first time that night he had asked instead of ordered.
I picked up my mother's broken phone and slipped it into my pocket.
“I need the truth,” I said. “Start with everything you know about Adrian Vale.”
Before he could answer, the unknown number sent another photograph.
Evelyn stood beside a rusted sign marked NORTH GATE.
May you like
Behind her, black water stretched toward the harbor lights.
The photograph had been taken close enough to show the silver bracelet on her wrist—and the dark shape burned into the wooden post beside her.
