Chapter 10

Alexander snatched the note before I could read the rest.

His face was pale — paler than I'd ever seen it. His hands were shaking. Not from fear. From recognition. "This is my mother's handwriting," he whispered. "But she's been dead for twenty years."

The lights flickered on.

I jumped. Alexander didn't. He was still staring at the note, at the blanket, at the impossible thing sitting on a table in a house that was supposed to be empty.

"The electricity shouldn't work," he said. "I never turned it back on."

"Someone did."

He looked at me. His eyes were hollow.

"Elena?"

"Elena wants you to suffer. This —" I pointed at the blanket. The yellow yarn. The careful, loving stitches. "This isn't suffering. This is a message."

"What kind of message?"

I walked toward the table. Picked up the blanket before he could stop me.

It was soft. Handmade. And pinned to the corner — so small I almost missed it — was a second note.

"For my grandchildren. The ones I never got to hold. — N"

Nora.

His mother.

Who died twenty years ago.

"Alexander," I said slowly. "When did your mother knit this?"

He was beside me in two steps. He took the blanket from my hands. Turned it over. Examined the stitches.

"Before she got sick," he said. "She knit blankets for all her friends' babies. She must have made one for yours too."

"Yours? As in — mine?"

"Your biological mother." He looked up at me. "The one who died giving you birth. My mother's best friend."

The pieces clicked together.

"Your mother made this blanket for me. Before I was born. Before she was sick. Before any of us existed."

"She must have kept it. Hidden it. And someone found it and brought it here." He touched the yellow yarn with one finger. Gently. Reverently. "But who?"

The lights flickered again.

Then the front door slammed shut behind us.

---

We both spun around.

The door was closed. Locked. No one was there.

"There's a draft," I said.

"There's no draft."

"Alexander —"

"I know."

He pulled out his phone. No signal. The screen glowed blue in the darkness.

"We should leave," I said.

"We should check the house."

"That's the opposite of leaving."

He grabbed my hand. Pulled me toward the hallway. "If someone is here — if someone has been watching us — I need to know. I can't protect you from a ghost."

"You can't protect me from a living person either if you're walking into a trap."

He stopped.

Turned to face me.

His eyes were wild now. Desperate.

"That blanket was made by my mother. For your mother. For you. I don't know how it got here. I don't know who left it. But I know one thing."

"What?"

"She wanted you to have it. Twenty years ago, she wanted you to be wrapped in something warm. Something made by hands that loved you before you were born." He cupped my face with both hands. "I'm not leaving until I find out who honored that wish."

I wanted to argue.

I wanted to drag him out the front door and drive back to the city and pretend none of this had happened.

But his hands were warm on my cheeks.

And his eyes were finally, finally alive.

"Fine," I said. "But we stay together."

"Together."

We walked into the darkness.

---

The house was bigger than it looked from outside.

Rooms opened into rooms. Hallways led to more hallways. Every surface was covered in dust — except the ones that weren't.

The kitchen had fresh flowers on the counter.

The bathroom had new towels.

The nursery — the room at the end of the hall, the one Alexander almost walked past — had a crib.

A new crib.

Assembled. Ready. Waiting.

"Someone has been living here," I whispered.

"Someone has been preparing." Alexander walked to the crib. Ran his hand along the railing. "This wasn't here before. I would have remembered."

"Who would do this? Elena?"

"Elena wants to take our children. Not prepare a nursery for them."

I looked around the room.

Pale yellow walls — the same color as the blanket. A rocking chair by the window — the same chair I'd seen in Alexander's office, the one he kept behind locked doors. A mobile hung above the crib — tiny wooden animals, hand-painted, each one different.

And on the wall, framed in gold:

A photograph.

Two women.

One dark-haired, one light. Both pregnant. Both laughing.

"This is my mother," Alexander said quietly, pointing to the light-haired woman. "And this —" He pointed to the dark-haired woman. "Is yours."

My biological mother.

Smiling.

Happy.

Alive.

"What happened to them?" I asked.

Alexander's jaw tightened. "They both died. My mother from the genetic condition. Yours from childbirth." He paused. "But they knew. Before they died, they knew they were both carrying children. They planned for us to grow up together."

"Planned how?"

"There were letters. Arrangements. A trust fund that was supposed to raise us both." His voice dropped. "But my father found out. He destroyed the letters. He took the money. And he made sure you were sent to the Vances — a family he could control."

"Your father?"

"Marcus Vance didn't fake his death to escape Elena. He faked his death to escape my father. Because he knew the truth. He knew who really killed those women."

The room spun.

"Killed?" I whispered. "You said they died of natural causes."

"I lied."

The lights flickered again.

And from somewhere deep in the house — somewhere dark and cold and hungry — a voice called out.

"Alexander? Isabella? I've been waiting so long to meet you."

I knew that voice.

I'd heard it in my dreams.

I'd heard it in my nightmares.

I turned toward the doorway.

My father — my real father, the one who was supp

osed to be dead — stepped out of the shadows.

Marcus Vance.

Smiling.

"I've missed you, darling," he said. "And I have so much to tell you about the night your mother really died."