Chapter 6. Behind The Locked Door

I somehow finished washing Lily's hair, helped her into her pajamas, dried the damp strands, read her bedtime story, and tucked the blankets around her exactly the way she liked, the corner folded just so beneath her chin. Every movement felt automatic, as though my body had taken over while my mind struggled to catch up with what had just happened.

Lily yawned and curled onto her side, her stuffed rabbit tucked beneath one arm. "Goodnight," she murmured sleepily.

I leaned down and kissed her forehead before I could stop myself. "Goodnight."

Within minutes, her breathing slowed into the steady rhythm of sleep. I remained beside the bed long after she drifted off, watching the rise and fall of her tiny chest, memorizing it the way I hadn't been given the chance to all those years ago.

The room was silent except for the ticking of the clock on the bedside table, yet my thoughts were deafening.

The lullaby. She knew my lullaby. Not one that sounded similar, not a melody borrowed from somewhere else — mine, a song that had existed nowhere except inside my heart until the seven short hours I had held my newborn daughter. I had never written it down, never recorded it, never sung it where anyone else could hear it, and yet Lily knew every note, every pause, every breath, as though it had been stitched into her long before she had words for it.

There could only be one explanation. My daughter had heard it.

I stood slowly, afraid my legs would give way beneath me, and left the room as quietly as I had entered. The moment I reached my bedroom, I closed the door behind me, slid to the floor, and pressed both hands over my mouth to stop the sob that threatened to escape. Tears spilled down my cheeks anyway, and I didn't wipe them away.

For almost six years, I had lived on hope alone. I had searched through missing-person reports, bribed hospital staff, hired investigators, followed rumors that led nowhere, and refused to bury my daughter in my heart because something inside me had always insisted she was still alive, even on the nights when insisting felt like madness.

Tonight, hope became certainty. Lily was my daughter. She had always been my daughter. Someone had stolen her from me, and someone inside Blackwood Manor knew exactly what had happened.

I didn't sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I saw Lily as a newborn lying against my chest, then six-year-old Lily humming the same lullaby as though she had carried it with her all her life, through however many hands, however many houses, however many lies.

By half past ten, I gave up trying. The manor had fallen silent, most of the lights out, the corridors beyond my window lying empty beneath the pale glow of the wall lamps.

Then movement caught my eye.

Damian Blackwood. He walked alone through the east wing with slow, measured steps. For the first time since I had met him, he wasn't wearing his suit jacket — his white shirt was rolled to the elbows, and fatigue showed in the set of his shoulders, in the way he carried himself like a man who had stopped performing for an audience because he believed no one was watching. In one hand, he carried a small bouquet of fresh white lilies.

The same flowers. The ones I had seen beside the locked door.

My pulse quickened. Keeping the lights off, I stepped closer to the window and watched him stop outside the room at the end of the corridor. For a long moment, he simply stood there, the flowers held loosely at his side, his head bowed as though gathering himself before something he had done many times before and had never once made easier.

Then he reached into his pocket, removed a key, and unlocked the door. The heavy lock clicked softly. He disappeared inside, and the door closed behind him.

I waited. Five minutes passed. Then ten. Twelve. Fifteen. The silence felt endless, stretched so thin I could hear my own heartbeat in my ears.

Finally, the door opened again. Damian stepped back into the corridor. The flowers were gone. He locked the door carefully before slipping the key back into his pocket.

Then something happened that sent a chill through my entire body.

He rested one hand against the wooden door, closed his eyes, and didn't move. Not for a few seconds — for nearly a full minute, he stood there with his forehead lowered slightly, his hand pressed against the wood with such quiet tenderness that he looked less like a billionaire standing in his own home and more like a man visiting someone's grave.

When he finally opened his eyes, the carefully controlled mask I had seen all week had cracked. Only for an instant. But I saw it.

Grief. Not fresh grief — old grief, the kind that had lived inside someone for years and had learned to wear another face in daylight, smiling through board meetings and dinner parties while something underneath it quietly starved.

He straightened, adjusted his sleeves, and became Damian Blackwood again. Cold. Controlled. Untouchable. Without looking back, he walked toward the main wing and disappeared into the darkness.

I remained where I was, unable to move. Who — or what — was inside that room? Why were fresh flowers placed there every week? Why did Mrs. Hayes visit it in secret? Why did Damian look as though part of him had died behind that door?

And then another memory surfaced. Lily's quiet voice.

"Sometimes there's a light underneath it."

Then another.

"She's waiting."

My eyes returned to the silent door at the end of the corridor, and a slow certainty settled over me, heavier than anything I had carried in the five years before this one.

I had come to Blackwood Manor believing I was searching for one truth. Instead, I had walked into a house built on secrets, where every person carried a fragment of the same story without ever laying the pieces side by side — Mrs. Hayes, Clara, Damian, and even Lily's forgotten memories, all of them connected to something I didn't understand yet, something that had been buried so carefully it had almost stayed buried.

I didn't know who had stolen Lily. I didn't know why. But I knew where the answers were waiting.

Behind that door.

I simply didn't know that opening it would destroy everything I believed about the night my daughter disappeared.