Chapter Eighteen:

Sebastian's POV

"Tell me that's a lie."

Aurora's voice cuts straight through the room. I look at the phone in her hand. Then at her face. Then back at the message.

For one second, I am not in this townhouse anymore. I am ten years old again, standing at the top of a staircase, listening to my mother cry behind a closed door while my father says something low and urgent that I cannot make out.

I hated that sound; I hate this one too. "I can't," I say. Her expression changes immediately. Not louder. Worse than that. It closes.

"You can't," she repeats. "I can't tell you it's a lie if I don't know that it is."

That is the wrong thing to say.

I know it the second it leaves my mouth.

Aurora stands so fast that the folder slides off her lap and hits the floor. Papers spill halfway out of it. She doesn't look down.

"So you did know something."

"No."

"Then why do you look like that?"

Because I remember too many things all at once. Because that message reached into a part of my childhood I buried years ago and pulled on it hard enough to make the whole structure shake. Because there were nights when my mother stopped speaking at dinner. Because there was one fight I was never meant to hear where my father said a woman's name, I forgot until this exact moment.

Elena.

Not Sinclair. Just Elena.

I did not know why it mattered then.

I think it matters now.

"I remember pieces," I say carefully.

Aurora laughs once. No humor in it. "Of course you do." "That isn't what you think." "Then say what it is." I take a breath and force myself to slow down, because this is the part where a man can lose the room by speaking too quickly. "When I was a child, my parents fought. Not often. But when they did, it was always the same kind of fight. Quiet first. Then sharp. Then over before anyone else could hear enough to understand it."

Her eyes don't leave my face. "One night," I continue, "I heard my father say a name. Elena. I forgot it. Or I thought I did. Until right now."

Aurora says nothing.

That silence makes me keep going.

"I don't know what that means. I don't know if the message is telling the truth, twisting it, or trying to make you turn on me before we get any further than this. But I did not know your mother by name until I saw those documents tonight."

"That doesn't mean your father didn't."

"No. "I hold her gaze. "It doesn't."

She looks away first.

Small thing. Human thing. But I catch it. Her hands are shaking now, just slightly, and she folds her arms as if that can hide it. I have seen her controlled. I have seen her in danger. This is something else. This is a woman trying not to let one message break apart three hours of carefully built trust.

I understand the instinct; I don't like being on the other side of it. "You should leave," she says. The words land flatter than they should.

I look at her. "What?"

"You heard me."

I don't move. "You're in my safehouse."

"Then I'll find another room."

"That's not what this is."

"It feels like it." Her eyes come back to mine. Colder now. Cleaner. "You brought me here. You watched me for months. You knew things about me before I knew them about you. And now a message shows up telling me your father was planning to leave his wife for my mother, and your face looks like someone just confirmed what you've been avoiding."

I let that sit for a second because fighting the shape of it will only make it worse. Then I say, "What would you like my face to do instead?"

That lands harder than I mean it to.

Aurora goes still. Good. Not because I want to hurt her. Because I am tired of being treated like I am on trial for things I have not yet had the chance to understand. "I am trying," I say more quietly, "to tell you the truth while it is still forming in my own head. If you want polished answers, I can lie to you. I imagine you've heard that voice before."

Something shifts behind her eyes.

The mention of Damien does it. Good. Let it.

She bends and picks up the folder from the floor with more force than necessary. One page slips loose and drifts sideways across the rug. Neither of us has reached for it yet. "You don't get to compare yourself to him," she says.

"I wasn't." "You implied it."

"I implied that you know what lying sounds like." Her mouth tightens. For one second, I think she is going to tell me to get out again. Instead, she says, "There was a woman." I frown. "What?"

"In my first life, before everything got bad, my stepmother said something once when she thought I wasn't listening." Aurora's voice goes distant in that dangerous way it does when she is looking at two timelines at once. "She was angry at my father. She said men always ruin themselves over the same kind of woman. The kind who makes them leave what they have and chase what they think they deserve."

I don't interrupt.

"At the time, I thought she meant another affair. Another secret. I didn't care enough to ask." Aurora looks down at the message again. "Now I wonder if she knew something about my mother. Or your father. Or both."

That is new.

And useful.

I step closer without meaning to. "Did she say anything else?"

Aurora shakes her head. "No. Or maybe she did, and I didn't understand what I was hearing." The loose page on the rug finally catches my eye. I bend, pick it up, and feel my pulse change the second. I see what it is: not a transfer form. Not an account sheet. A letter, unsigned. Unsent. Folded once and buried among the financial documents. I turn it over. No name on the outside.

Aurora notices my face. "What is it?"

"I don't know yet."

I open it.

The handwriting is old-fashioned, slanted, and careful. Not my father's. Not Vincent's. A woman's. I read the first line, and every muscle in my body locks.

Adrian, if Elena leaves before Friday, none of us will survive what Vincent has already started.

Aurora is beside me before I realize she has moved. "Let me see." I hand her the page. Her fingers brush mine for a second. Small contact. Wrong moment. It still does something to the air.

She reads the line once. Then again.

"Elena," she says softly. "My mother."

"Yes."

Her eyes move lower down the page. Mine do too.

The rest of the letter is half warning, half confession. It mentions money moved too quickly, a sealed account, pressure from Vincent, and one line scratched out so hard the paper is nearly torn. Then, near the bottom: If he finds out about the child, it will no longer be only Adrian he wants gone.

Aurora stops breathing. I feel it before I hear it. She lifts her head very slowly. "The child," she says. Neither of us speaks for a moment. Then Aurora takes one step back.

And another: the room changes by that distance, because now the question is not whether our parents knew each other. It is whether one of us was born from that connection, and if that is true, then this story is not just about murder.

It is about blood. My phone buzzes. Neither of us wants to look. I look anyway: unknown number, one line. Now ask yourselves which one of you Vincent really meant to kill first.

Aurora and Sebastian just found a letter tying their parents, Vincent, and a hidden child together, and the messenger's latest question is worse than any answer they've had so far.

Because if Vincent were protecting a secret this big, one of them may have been marked long before either was born.