Sleep was impossible after Margot's revelation.
I spent the night pacing my room like a caged animal, her words echoing in my head with relentless precision. *Room 308 was your father's room.* Every time I closed my eyes, I saw that portrait gap above the fireplace—the perfect rectangle of unfaded wallpaper that accused me with its emptiness.
By dawn, exhaustion had given way to desperate determination. I had to know who my father was. I had to understand why my mother had died in his room.
When I opened my door to head downstairs, a folded piece of paper fluttered to the floor. The handwriting was Margot's—precise, economical strokes that matched her personality.
*It wasn't removed. It was only turned around.*
My heart hammered against my ribs as I made my way to the main hall. The fireplace dominated the far wall, its ornate mantelpiece crowned by that accusatory gap. But Margot's note had said 'turned around,' not 'removed.'
I approached the decorative screen that flanked the fireplace—an elaborate piece of carved mahogany that I'd assumed was purely ornamental. When I pushed it aside, my breath caught in my throat.
The portrait was there, massive and imposing, but facing the wall like a punished child. Someone had simply rotated the heavy frame on its mounting hardware, hiding the image while keeping it in place. My hands shook as I gripped the ornate frame and slowly turned it back toward the room.
The man in the painting had my eyes.
Not similar eyes, not reminiscent features—my exact eyes, down to the unusual amber flecks that caught the light. His hair was dark like mine, his jawline sharp, his cheekbones high and aristocratic. But it was the expression that made my knees weak—a look of profound sadness mixed with fierce protectiveness, as if he were staring directly at me across twenty years of silence.
I stumbled backward, my vision blurring at the edges. The brass nameplate at the bottom of the frame read simply: *Jonathan Blackthorn, 1965-2003.*
The same year my mother died.
With trembling fingers, I examined the back of the frame. Carved into the wood in elegant script were the words: *To E, from your harbor in the storm. — J.*
E for Elise. J for Jonathan.
My father.
But it was what I found behind the portrait that made my world tilt on its axis. Embedded in the wall, hidden by the massive frame, was a small safe. The combination lock was brass, tarnished with age, and engraved with delicate initials: E.C.
Elise Blackthorn? Had my mother taken his name? Or was the 'C' something else entirely?
I tried her birthday first—the numbers my fingers knew by heart from years of filling out forms. The lock didn't budge. Then, with a sick feeling in my stomach, I tried my own birthday: 10-15-83.
The lock clicked open with a sound like a held breath being released.
Inside were three items that would change everything I thought I knew about my mother's death.
The first was a leather-bound journal, its pages filled with my mother's handwriting—but not in English. Every word was written in some kind of substitution cipher, letters replaced with symbols that meant nothing to me. But I could see dates in the margins, all from the final months of 1983, leading up to her death.
The second item was a USB flash drive, old enough to be from the early 2000s. Someone had written 'PROOF' on its black casing in white correction fluid, the letters bold and urgent.
The third was a folded piece of paper, yellowed with age. When I opened it, my mother's familiar handwriting made my chest constrict with grief and recognition:
*If you're reading this, I'm gone. Trust no one who's still alive. —Elise*
My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the paper. This was the first time I'd seen her handwriting since childhood, the first message she'd left specifically for me. But the warning sent ice through my veins. Trust no one who's still alive.
Not Sterling. Not Margot. No one.
I shoved the journal and USB drive into my jacket pockets, my mind racing with questions I didn't know how to answer. But as I reached to close the safe, every light in the manor went out at once.
Not a flicker, not the gradual dimming of a power outage. Someone had cut the main electrical feed.
The darkness was absolute, pressing against my eyes like velvet. But in the silence that followed, I heard something that made my blood freeze: footsteps in the hallway. Slow, deliberate, moving toward the main hall with the confidence of someone who knew exactly where they were going.
I fumbled for my phone, desperate for its flashlight, but the screen lit up with an incoming message from the same unknown number that had sent me the original letter:
*Your mother wrote that journal for you. Put it back.*
Someone was watching me. Someone knew exactly what I'd found and exactly what I was doing. The footsteps were getting closer, echoing off the high ceiling of the main hall.
I pressed myself against the wall behind the fireplace, clutching the journal and USB drive against my chest. The footsteps stopped just outside the hall entrance.
Then a flashlight beam cut through the darkness, sweeping across the room in a methodical search pattern. I held my breath, praying the beam wouldn't find me, but when it finally landed on the open safe, I heard a sharp intake of breath.
"Wren?" Sterling's voice carried a note I'd never heard before—not surprise at finding me here, but fear at seeing what I'd discovered. The flashlight beam moved from the safe to my hiding spot behind the fireplace, illuminating my face in harsh white light.
But he wasn't looking at me. He was staring at the empty safe with something that looked like panic.
"You took the journal?" His voice was barely above a whisper, but I caught the tremor beneath the words. This wasn't a question—it was terror.
He turned the flashlight beam on me, and in its harsh glare, I saw something in his expression that made my stomach drop. Not anger, not betrayal—pure, undiluted fear.
"You have ten minutes to pack everything and come with me," he said, his voice dropping to an urgent whisper. "Get whatever you need and meet me at the back entrance. Tonight, there aren't just three people in this manor."
As if to prove his point, another flashlight beam appeared at the far end of the hallway, moving toward us with purpose.
We weren't alone anymore.
