Chapter 52: Someone Was Inside

The car hadn’t even come to a full stop before my pulse spiked.

The porch light was off.

The street was quiet.

But my bedroom light on the second floor, the one facing the narrow stretch of road was glowing softly through the darkness.

That light shouldn’t have been on.

I knew it with the same certainty I knew my own name.

I hadn’t left it on. I always turned it off. Always. It was a habit drilled into me after too many nights of unease, too many moments where silence felt louder than noise.

Marcus noticed it the same second I did.

“Don’t move,” he said quietly, already reaching for the door handle.

Elliot’s hand shot out, stopping him. “Wait.”

Liam leaned forward from the back seat, his arm instinctively tightening around my sister. “Someone could still be inside.”

The word inside echoed in my chest.

Not watching from afar.

Not threatening from the shadows.

Inside my space.

My sanctuary.

I swallowed hard, my fingers curling into the seat beneath me. “We can’t just sit here.”

Elliot’s eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. Calm. Focused. But beneath it steel.

“We’re not,” he said. “We’re doing this right.”

We exited the car silently, spreading out the way people do when they’ve done this before when danger is no longer theoretical.

Marcus took the side path, keeping close to the wall. Liam guided my sister behind the low hedge, positioning her where she could see the front door without being seen herself.

Elliot stayed with me.

My dad’s best friend didn’t touch me, but his presence was solid, grounding. A quiet promise that if something went wrong, he’d be the first line between me and whatever waited inside.

The front door was locked.

That alone sent a chill through me.

Because if someone had broken in, they hadn’t forced entry.

Which meant…

“They had a key,” I whispered.

Elliot’s jaw tightened. “Or they’ve been watching long enough to know your habits.”

The lock clicked softly as he turned it.

Every muscle in my body went rigid.

The house smelled wrong.

Not smoke. Not decay.

Something sharper.

Like cologne.

Not mine.

Not Marcus’s.

Not Liam’s.

A stranger’s presence lingered in the air, intimate and invasive, like fingers trailing along my spine.

The living room lights were off.

The kitchen was untouched.

But the silence felt… staged.

“Check upstairs,” Elliot murmured.

I shook my head. “That’s where the light is.”

“Exactly.”

Marcus appeared silently at the base of the stairs, eyes hard. “No sign of forced entry anywhere else.”

My stomach twisted.

We climbed slowly, every step creaking louder than it should have. My heart pounded so violently I was sure whoever was inside could hear it.

At the top of the stairs, Elliot raised a hand.

Stop.

The door to my bedroom was ajar.

I hadn’t left it that way.

Elliot entered first.

Marcus followed.

I stayed rooted in the doorway, my breath catching as my eyes swept the room.

Nothing was overturned.

Nothing broken.

My bed was untouched.

But my desk 

My desk drawer was open.

The one I never left open.

Inside it, where my journal should have been, was empty.

A hollow, sickening emptiness opened in my chest.

“No,” I whispered, stepping forward. “No, no, no…”

Marcus swore quietly. “They took something.”

“They took me,” I said numbly.

Because that journal held everything.

My fears.

My thoughts.

My confessions about Elliot, my dad’s best friend the guilt, the tension I pretended didn’t exist.

My complicated feelings about Marcus, my stepbrother the history, the lines blurred too long ago.

Even my observations about Liam, my sister’s mate the way his protectiveness sometimes felt like something more dangerous, more consuming.

Whoever took it now knew my soul.

Elliot’s phone buzzed.

He glanced at the screen and froze.

“What?” I demanded.

His eyes lifted to mine.

“They just sent me something.”

My blood ran cold. “What did they say?”

He hesitated.

That hesitation terrified me more than any answer.

“Show me.”

Slowly, he turned the screen.

It was a photo.

Of my journal.

Open.

A page circled in red.

My handwriting unmistakable.

And beneath it, a message:

You shouldn’t write what you’re not ready to face.

I sank onto the edge of the bed, my legs giving out beneath me.

They weren’t just threatening me anymore.

They were dismantling me.

Piece by piece.

From the inside out.

And as Elliot stepped closer, his shadow falling over me, I realized something that made my chest ache with both fear and clarity

This wasn’t about chasing us anymore.

It was about turning us against each other.

My phone buzzed in my hand.

Unknown number.

I opened the message.

Which of them do you think will betray you first?

And for the first time since this began…

I didn’t immediately know the answer.