Chapter 42

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Chapter 42: Ghosts of the Garden

The drive to the mansion was heavy with silence, thick and anticipatory. Isla sat rigid in the passenger seat, watching the landscape shift from the city's hard steel to rural abandonment. The trees rose up like skeletal sentinels over the serpentine road, branches tangled into each other like secrets that would not die.

Ethan held the wheel, eyes on the road, jaw set, his knuckles turning white against the leather. They hadn't said a word since they left the apartment. Isla had no idea where to begin. Or maybe she simply did not want to give voice to fear gnawing its way up her throat.

"This place," he said finally, his voice low, "was where your mother disappeared for three months after she tried to leave Victor.".

Isla inclined her head slowly. "He brought her here?"

"She went willingly at first. Thought she was running to love. But love… evolved." 

The house appeared like a ghost among the trees—a crumbling manor surrounded by ivy and shadow. The gates creaked half-open, rust on the hinges like decay. Ethan pulled up at the front, and Isla looked at the building, her chest thudding like a drum.

This was where her mother's letters led her. This was where the secret hurt lay.

The halls rang with the smell of abandonment. The floors groaned beneath their feet as they moved along a grand but deserted hallway. Dust danced in the light that streamed through the high, shattered windows. The air reeked of mildew.

In the living room, a chill, blackened fireplace stood still. Bookshelves on the walls, knocked off some of them, books strewn everywhere like an abandoned secret. And there, in the corner, she saw it—the old piano, keys yellowed with age, one of them cracked.

My mother played," she whispered.

Ethan nodded. "Every morning. The only thing that kept her sane.".

Isla approached the piano, her hand traveling over the keys. A recollection—someone else's, created by her own mind—erupted before her mind's eye: her mother, young, beautiful, seated at the piano with her eyes closed, trying to drown out the fury of a man's voice upstairs.

"I want to see her room," Isla said.

They climbed the curving staircase. A door at the end of the hallway, once white, now curled and chipped with white. Isla reached out a hand and stopped. Her hand trembled.

Ethan placed a guiding hand on the back of her neck. "You don't have to do this alone."

"I do," she whispered.

She pushed the door wide.

The room was still. Peeling paper at the corners. The bed was not made, the sheets worn grey with dust. On the dresser was a porcelain hairbrush, beside a tarnished mirror. Isla moved in like a person on holy ground.

Isla found the journal in the back of a bottom drawer.

It had been covered in silk, trembling in her hands when she unfolded it. Her mother's writing filled the pages—unbridled emotion, disjointed dreams and thoughts spilling out as the entries progressed.

June 12th.

I am no longer able to differentiate where Victor ends and I start.

June 18th.

He says he loves me. Love is not supposed to resemble drowning.

July 5th.

I saw her. The other woman. She was crying. I asked her why. She said, "He said the same things to me."

Isla's breath caught.

There were pages of other women. Other secrets. Other lives Victor used, broke, and discarded. And the one which made her let the journal fall:

August 20th.

I'm pregnant. And it's not his.

The room's silence rang like a scream.

Ethan was by her side immediately. "What did it say?"

She shook her head, tears pricking at her eyes. "My mother. she was with someone else. She loved someone else. And she hid it from me."

Ethan slowly took the journal away from her and read the sentence. His face turned grim.

"This makes sense," he said quietly. "Victor wasn't obsessed—his mind was broken. And he never forgave her for it."

Isla couldn't get air. The air was too thick. She tottered over to the window and opened it, letting the cold slap her in the face.

It's all been a lie," she claimed. "Christopher, Victor, even the story my mom told me. I don't know who I am any longer."

Ethan moved beside her. "You're Isla. Stronger than them all. You're the truth they were trying to keep secret."

His words settled into her slowly.

They stayed in the room for a while, watching the sun set over the estate. Isla read more entries, piecing together her mother’s pain, tracing the outline of a woman who had once been in love with a man too dangerous to love.

And then, as they prepared to leave, Isla paused at the door.

“Ethan?”

“Yeah?”

“If Victor finds out I’ve been here…”

"He will," he declared bluntly. "But now you possess something he doesn't."

She gazed at him, perplexed. "What?"

"The entire truth. And tales—if applied properly—are stronger than any firearm."

They left the estate in silence again, but it was a different type of silence. One with resolve.

Isla was no longer running.

She was preparing for war.

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