Chapter 9: The unraveling

SCARLETT

The morning air feels brittle, like it might shatter if I breathe too loudly. I stood at the kitchen sink, coffee untouched, watching a gray ribbon of mist drift across the backyard.

Mom’s already gone her car missing from the driveway. She didn’t leave a note.

Normally I’d assume she went to the clinic early, but after last night… nothing feels normal.

I thumb open my phone. The last message from Unknown glares back at me. June seventh. Midnight. My father’s death date. The words dig under my skin like a sharp razor.

I try to convince myself the sender is some bored stranger. But how would a stranger know that date? Or Damien’s name?

I scrolled through contacts, hesitating over Detective Hayes, the officer who handled my dad’s case. Would he even remember me after two years? And if I tell him about the texts, I’ll have to explain Damien. The thought of exposing that tangled secret of Mom finding out what I almost let happen turns my stomach.

Instead, I called Rachel.

She picks up on the third ring, voice raspy. “Scar? It’s barely seven. What’s wrong?”

“I need you to come over,” I whisper. “Please.”

A beat of silence. “You sound freaked. I’ll be there in twenty.”

By the time Rachel arrives, I’ve paced a groove into the kitchen floor. She takes one look at me and drops her bag.

“Okay,” she says, “what the hell happened?”

I shove the phone at her. She listens to the audio file, her eyes widening.

“Jesus, Scar. That’s… creepy as hell. You think it’s Damien messing with you?”

“I don’t know. He wouldn’t—” I stop. Wouldn’t he? Damien’s moods shift like smoke. “Why June seventh?”

“That’s…” She frowns. “Your dad’s—”

“Yeah.”

Rachel bites her lip. “Have you told your mom?”

“No. And you can’t either.”

“Scarlett, this isn’t some prank. Someone knows things they shouldn’t. We should call the cops.”

“And say what? That a mystery stalker sent a spooky bedtime story?”

Rachel sighs, but she doesn’t argue. “Okay. Then we figure it out ourselves.”

Her stubbornness is both comforting and terrifying.

We spend the morning combing through every scrap of memory from the night Dad died.

Car crash. Single vehicle. He was driving back from a late shift at the docks. Police called it an accident with wet roads, sharp curves.

But the night plays back in fragments I can’t unsee. Mom answering the phone, face draining of color. Her saying He’s gone before the officer even spoke.

Rachel leans back. “What if it wasn’t an accident?”

I almost laugh, but the sound sticks in my throat.

“What if,” she presses, “someone else was there? June seventh, midnight. That’s too exact to be random.”

Her words echo in the quiet kitchen.

By afternoon, tension knots every muscle in my back. I need to move, to do something.

Damien’s workshop flashes in my mind the locked steel door he guards like a vault.

If he knows something about Dad…

Before I can overthink, I grab my jacket. “I need to check something,” I told Rachel. “Stay here.”

She starts to protest, but I’m already out the door.

The walk to Damien’s place is a blur of gray streets and restless wind. His house looms at the end of the cul-de-sac, darker than the rest, curtains drawn.

I circle to the side yard, heart pounding. The workshop door is padlocked, but the window above the workbench is cracked for air.

I drag a recycling bin beneath it, climbed up, and peer inside.

At first I see nothing but shelves and tools. Then my gaze lands on a single photograph tacked to the wall.

A car. Black sedan. Its headlights smear through rain.

Below it, a date scrawled in red marker 06 / 07.

My breath catches.

Lightning-fast footsteps crunch the gravel behind me.

“Scarlett.”

I frooze.

Damien stands a few feet away, jaw tight, raincoat hanging open. He looks like he stepped straight from a storm that hasn’t reached the neighborhood yet.

“What,” he says evenly, “are you doing here?”

I swallow hard. “I was walking. Thought I heard something.”

His eyes flick to the window, then back to me. For a long, awful moment, neither of us moved.

Finally, he says, “Come inside.”

The workshop smells of oil and cold metal. Damien locks the door behind us.

I keep my arms crossed to hide the tremor in my hands.

“What’s with the photograph?” I nod toward the wall.

He doesn’t glance at it. “A job from years ago. Nothing to do with you.”

“June seventh isn’t nothing.”

His jaw clenches. “Drop it, Scarlett.”

“No.” My voice shakes but I don’t care. “Someone’s been texting me. They know about that date. They know about you. What happened that night?”

He steps closer, the air between us electric. “Who texted you?”

“I don’t know. But you do, don’t you?”

For a heartbeat, something flickers in his eyes fear, or guilt.

Then he exhales, slow. “Your father and I… we worked together.”

My stomach lurches. “What?”

“He was in depth. Owed people money. Dangerous people. I tried to help him, but he wouldn’t listen.” Damien’s voice roughens. “The night he died, he called me. Said he had proof of something, records, names. Told me to meet him at midnight. But when I got there, his car was already at the bottom of the ravine.”

My knees nearly gave up. “You’re saying he was murdered?”

“I’m saying I never believed it was an accident.”

The room tilts.

“And my mom?” I whisper.

Damien hesitates. “Maria didn’t know the details. She… she only knew he was keeping secrets.”

The pieces don’t fit, but they’re starting to form a picture I don’t want to see.

Before I can press further, Damien’s phone buzzes. He checks it, face hardening.

“What is it?”

He shows me the screen. An unknown number. Same message I received.

“That’s tonight,” I breathe.

Damien grabs a jacket. “You’re staying here.”

“Like hell I am.”

“Scarlett—”

“I’m coming. Whoever this is, they came after me first.”

Our eyes lock. Something unspoken passes between us fear, defiance, the shared knowledge that we might be walking into a trap.

Finally, he nods once. “Then we go together.”

Night falls heavy and wet. We park a block from Dock 47, the old shipping yard where Dad once worked. Rusted cranes loom like skeletal giants against the moonlit water.

Every sound wave slapping pilings, gulls crying sets my nerves on edge.

We move in silence along the darkened pier until a faint glow appears ahead, a single hanging lantern swaying in the wind.

Under it stands a figure in a long coat, face hidden by shadow.

My pulse drums in my ears.

“Scarlett,” the figure says. A woman’s voice, low and sharp. “You deserve the truth.”

She steps forward. Moonlight spills over her features.

I gasp.

It’s my mother.

“Mom?” My voice cracks. “What are you—”

“Stay back,” Damien warns, but she ignores him.

Maria’s eyes glitter with something between sorrow and fury. “I told myself you’d never have to know. But they won’t stop. They never stop.”

I can barely breathe. “Know what?”

“That your father wasn’t the man you think he was. He stole from them records, money, everything. And when he tried to leave, they made sure he couldn’t.”

She glances at Damien, her mouth tightening. “And he was supposed to be the lookout.”

Damien flinches.

I look between them, disbelief crashing through me. “You… you were involved?”

Maria’s voice hardens. “We all were, in different ways. But it was your father who lit the fuse.”

Lightning cracks far out over the water, illuminating the pain etched across her face.

“I kept the evidence,” she says. “Hidden, for you. But someone found out. They’re trying to finish what they started.”

Wind whips her hair as she steps closer, pressing a small flash drive into my hand. “This is everything. If anything happens to me, you take it to the police.”

“Mom—”

A sudden thud echoes across the dock. Footsteps. More than one set.

Maria’s eyes widen. “Run!”

From the shadows, figures emerge three, maybe four, dressed in dark coats, moving fast.

Damien pulls me back, shoving me toward the car. The flash drive burns in my palm.

Behind us, my mother’s voice rings out, fierce and unyielding.

“Go!”