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Chapter 45
Last Updated:
2025-05-19 14:53:33---
Chapter 45: The Echo of Secret Truths
Isla stood in the middle of her mother's old bedroom, where the smell of perfume and forgotten memories clung to the walls. She hadn't noticed that the floor creaked beneath her step before, but now it seemed each groan of the house was a voice trying to tell her something from the past. The letters, the pages, the picture of Victor Kane standing with her mother—it was all too much to overlook.
She opened another note she'd found crumpled up within the lining of her mother's jewelry box. This one was different. No date. No hello. Just words, scribbled out in trembling script:
"You never stop loving the devil who made you feel alive. I'm sorry."
Isla's chest tightened. Her heart pounded.
Her mother hadn't just been afraid of Victor Kane—she'd loved him. Or something like it. Maybe it wasn't love, actually. Maybe it'd been obsession. Desperation. Addiction to a man as handsome as he was lethal.
"We used to be friends," Mhairi said softly.
The walls, naturally, didn't answer. But deep in her bones, Isla sensed the weight of her mother's choices pressing down on her—choices that Isla herself might be making.
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Christopher returned that evening, finding her crouched on the floor of the room, letters strewn about her. He didn't utter a word initially, instead simply slipping in and sitting beside her, not even asking if he could stay. He simply was.
At last, he answered, low voice. "You read the letters."
She nodded but still refused to look at him. "You knew?"
"I suspected," he admitted. "There was always rumor. But I never knew how deep it went… until one of the letters, when I was in my teens. I thought it was an old affair. But Victor was never just a man, was he?"
"No," Isla answered, shaky voice. "He wasn't."
They remained in silence for a very long time, broken only by the rumble of a storm brewing outside. Thunder boomed like the past thudding on the door.
Christopher leaned over and placed his hand on hers, his fingers lightly brushing against hers. "Isla, you don't have to walk this road alone."
But she pulled back. "I already have. And you can't understand it—not really. You didn't lose a mother to secrets. You didn't grow up not knowing why every man seemed like a threat, why I continued to dream of a name I didn't even know—Victor."
"You then help me understand," he pleaded. "Let me carry some of it.".
She glared at him, her eyes tired, but defiant. "I don't trust anyone anymore. Not with this."
---
It was the night, Isla couldn't sleep. The letters burned herself into her brain like fire on parchment. She couldn't get her mother's words out of her head—particularly the last one: You never stop loving the devil who made you feel alive.
Was that what she was doing with Christopher? With Victor?
Because lately, Victor's name tasted differently on her lips. Not just as a man to be feared—but as an energy she sensed bound to her, like gravity. His hand had reached into her mother's life, and now it was clawing its way into hers.
She got up, padded barefoot down to the library. Victor's old safe remained behind the bogus bookshelf. She had broken it before. Maybe there was more.
Her fingertips hovered, and then turned the dial: 1-9-8-7. Her mother's birth year. A soft click.
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Inside was a single envelope. Padded out thicker than the others. Sealed in wax. The initials carved into it: VK.
Isla unfolded the seal with shaking fingers.
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*"To Isla,
If you're reading this, then at last the ghosts finally caught up with you. I did not want you to inherit my guilt, but blood calls to blood. Victor wasn't simply a man I loved. He was the origin of all that I feared—and all that I longed for. He was the first man ever to make me feel seen. Not loved. Not protected. Seen.
You look like me. But I hope you don't make the same choices. I escaped him, but he never released me. And now he's haunting you the way he used to haunt me.
Beware. And remember: love and danger frequently go hand in hand.
—
—Mother.*
—
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The letter fell from her grasp. Her heart racing. Her hands cold.
Victor Kane had tormented more than her mother's life.
He was still watching.
And Isla now knew—it wasn't just about her past.
It was about her future.
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