Chapter 44

Chapter 44 — The Letter She Shouldn't Have Found

The storm outside hadn’t relented, and neither had the one in Isla’s chest. Thunder cracked the sky like it was splitting open secrets of its own. In her mother’s old bedroom—the one no one had touched since her passing—Isla stood barefoot, holding the yellowed letter that had just undone everything she thought she knew.

She hadn’t come in here looking for truth. She came because sleep wouldn’t hold her, because her mother’s perfume still clung faintly to the wardrobe door, and because something had pulled her there. Fate, maybe. Or ghosts.

The envelope had no name. Just a date from over two decades ago—before Isla was born. But the handwriting, the looping, graceful strokes, were unmistakably her mother’s.

She read it again.

> My dearest Victor,

I still hear your voice when the world goes quiet. I still taste your kiss when I close my eyes. I should hate you, I should wish you gone, but I can’t. You live in me.

I fear what this secret might do if it ever escapes these pages, but it’s yours. Always has been.

Love,

Elena

Isla folded the letter slowly, like it might bite her. The silence of the house pressed in as if it, too, was ashamed.

Victor.

She sank onto the floor, the creak of the old wooden bed frame above her head the only reply. Her breath trembled out of her lips in shallow bursts. Her mother had loved him. Not just fleetingly. Not foolishly. This was a love that festered and burned, the kind that wrote itself into confessions on nights when no one else was listening.

But what did that make Isla? What was she now—caught in this twisted circle where bloodlines, secrets, and passions blurred?

Christopher’s words from two nights ago came clawing back. “You don’t know everything about your mother. You should ask Victor what she was to him.”

God, had he known? Had they all known? Was she the only one foolish enough to be dancing in the shadows with no idea who’d drawn the curtains?

She stood abruptly, knees aching from the hardwood. Her fingers clutched the letter too tightly, crumpling one corner. She wanted to destroy it. Burn it. Pretend it never existed.

But she couldn’t.

She needed answers. And there was only one man alive who could give them to her.

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Back at the Kane estate,

Victor was exactly where Isla hoped he’d be—alone in the greenhouse, trimming orchids under the dull glow of amber lights. The air smelled of wet soil and silence.

He didn’t look at her when she stepped in, but he stiffened like he felt her storm before she said a word.

“I found something,” she said, voice as cold as the rain that had followed her there. “A letter.”

Still, he said nothing.

She took a step closer. “From her. To you.”

Finally, his hands stilled. The garden shears hung in the air like they’d forgotten their purpose.

“What do you want to know, Isla?”

Her name on his lips felt different now. Too soft. Too careful. As if he already knew what she’d ask and dreaded her hearing the answer.

“Did you love my mother?” The words cracked, but she didn’t let them fall apart.

He turned. Not rushed, not surprised. Just resigned.

“Yes,” he said. “Once. Maybe always.”

The confession didn’t soothe her. It seared.

She stepped back, breath catching. “And you didn’t think I deserved to know? You let me feel things for you… when you—when she—”

“It wasn’t planned,” Victor cut in, voice low and aching. “I didn’t know you then. And by the time I did, by the time you and I became whatever this is… it was too late.”

Isla’s laugh was bitter. “Whatever this is? You mean the mess we’ve made of each other?”

He didn’t deny it.

“I hate that I still want you,” she whispered, shaking. “Even now.”

Victor’s jaw tightened. “Then don’t say it.”

“Why?” she dared, stepping toward him. “Afraid you’ll say it back?”

The space between them burned. The air was thick with things unsaid. With what-ifs and regrets. She could feel the old floor of her world crumbling under the weight of their shared history.

Victor closed the distance, just slightly. Enough that she could hear the truth in his breath. “I loved her,” he murmured. “But I ache for you.”

Isla blinked away the tears rising fast. She hated him for saying it. Hated herself for wanting to believe it.

She dropped the letter on the bench beside him. “Then tell me everything. No more lies. If we’re going to destroy each other, I want to at least know what’s real.”

Victor nodded, gaze heavy with remorse. “Then you need to know how it started. And why your mother never walked away, even when she should have.”

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