LOGINNadia’s POV“Move.”Sebastian says it once; that is enough. The two black SUVs are already rolling through the cemetery gate, tires crushing gravel, headlights cutting across the stones like they own the dead too.Aurora grabs the notebooks. I take the thin file and the locket. Sebastian reaches for the cardboard box, then thinks better of it and leaves it. Good. We have what matters.Clara says, “Back path.” Vane says, “No.” No one listens to him. Good. For the first time in my life, I am done listening to men who call me a subject and think that makes me smaller. We run, not toward the front.Behind the rows of stones, past the narrow chapel wall, and through wet grass that grabs at my shoes and nearly turns my ankle on the first three steps. Aurora is ahead of me. Sebastian just behind. Clara is moving faster than I expected. Vane slower. Arthur is nowhere near us because, of course, Arthur is not here. Wrong old traitor.The SUVs stop, doors slam, voices too many. “Split and cover
Nadia’s POV“Don’t come any closer.” The words leave my mouth before Dr. Elias Vane takes a second step through the gate; he stops. Good.He’s holding the cardboard box against his side like it matters more than the gun his daughter’s man is carrying, and maybe it does. Clara stands half a pace in front of him now, not protective exactly, just positioned. Like she knows I might run at him and hasn’t decided whether she would stop me.“I brought what you asked for,” Vane says. “I didn’t ask for anything.” “No,” he says. “Your life did," I almost laugh. Almost.Aurora moves closer to my shoulder. Sebastian is on my other side. The grave is at our backs. My grandmother’s locket is cold in my palm. Everything in me feels too tight. “Open the box,” Aurora says.Clara glances at her father. He hesitates.Sebastian notices. “If he says no, we leave.” That does it.Vane sets the box on the nearest stone ledge and opens it. Inside are three notebooks. Black covers. Date labels on the front in
Aurora’s POV“What place?”I ask it too quickly. Eleanor Vale looks at me like she’s deciding whether the truth is a kindness or one more injury tonight. I don’t have patience for that.“Eleanor.” She exhales once.“Marian believed Elena split the code the way she split everything else. One part on your side. One part in Nadia’s life. The bracelet points to the second location.”Nadia takes one step closer. “Where?”Eleanor’s eyes move to the locket still hanging loose in Nadia’s hand. Then to me, then back again. “The cemetery.” No one speaks for a second. The room seems to shrink around the word. Cemetery, Of course. Of course Elena would leave part of it with the dead. Of course Marian would help her. Of course every woman in this story keeps asking daughters to dig through grief for instructions. “Which grave?” I ask.Eleanor says, “Not Elena’s.” That lands harder than I expect. “Then whose?”“Marian’s husband.”Nadia goes still. “I never met him.” “No,” Eleanor says. “But Marian
Sebastian’s POV“Down.”The word leaves my mouth the second the lights die. Glass rattles somewhere in the front hall. A frame falls. Eleanor lets out one sharp breath, not quite a scream. Then everything goes black and quiet in the wrong way. Not power-cut quiet, but occupied quiet.I pull my phone out and switch on the flashlight. White light cuts a narrow line through the dark.Aurora is already moving. Of course she is. She reaches Nadia first and pulls her away from the window. Good. Megan is pressed against the wall near the mantel. Arthur is still in his chair, one hand on his cane, looking annoyed more than frightened. Also good. Eleanor is halfway to her desk.“Stay away from the windows,” I say. Another crash, closer this time, in the front hall. Someone is inside.Aurora looks at me. No panic. Just one sharp nod. “I’ll check the hall,” I say. “No,” she says immediately. “We do it together.” Not the time to argue. I nod once. We move.Nadia says, “I’m not staying here.” “Yes
Aurora’s POV“What does that mean?”I hear the question come out of my mouth, but I already know why no one answers right away. Because the room knows exactly what it means.The key was left to me; the code phrase was left to Nadia. My mother split the truth the same way she split us: neat, cruel, and practical. Still choosing strategy over softness even from the grave.Clara looks at me. Then Nadia. “It means Elena did not trust either of you alone.” That lands harder than it should. Because some part of me still wants my mother to have loved us in a way that looked simple; she didn’t.She loved us like a woman under siege. Like someone who knew what men with money and family names do when they feel their inheritance slipping.Sebastian says, “What exactly is the code phrase?”Clara shakes her head. “Marian never told me.”Nadia’s fingers tighten around the locket. “My grandmother knew.” “Yes.” “And she told no one.” “Also yes.” Good. Another dead woman with a secret and a timetable.
Sebastian’s POV“Don’t open that door.” I say it before the third knock lands; no one argues. Good.Aurora is already holding the affidavit tighter. Nadia still has the locket in one hand and the note in the other. Arthur hasn’t moved from the chair. Megan is nearest the window, trying to see the street without being seen from it.Eleanor Vale stands by the hall table with her chin lifted, the way old women do when they’ve already lived through enough to stop performing fear for anyone else. The knock comes again.Then a woman’s voice. “Eleanor, if you hand the wrong paper to the wrong people, Marian dies for the second time.”That gets a reaction, not from Eleanor, but from Nadia. I see it in the way her whole body goes still. Junebug was one thing. That name, that memory-this is another. “Do you know the voice?” I ask without looking away from the door.“No,” Nadia says. “But she knows too much.” Fair. Too much is becoming a pattern.Aurora steps toward the door. I catch her elbow.
Sebastian’s POV“Let her go.”My voice comes out flat, not loud, not emotional; it still cuts through the room.Vincent has one hand locked around Nadia’s wrist and the other braced at her shoulder, angling her just enough toward the window to make the threat believable. He doesn’t need a weapon. N
Aurora’s POV“Who authorized this session?”The voice blasts through the boardroom speakers before any of us move. Another screen lights up.Then another, men in suits. One woman with silver hair and sharp eyes. Faces arranged in neat little squares across the wall, all of them wearing the same exp
Aurora's POV"Leverage."I say the word out loud, not to the room, but to myself, to the version of me that woke up six years in the past thinking she was the lucky one. The saved one. The child her mother chose.Vincent's smile does not move. That is what breaks something loose in my chest—not gri
Aurora’s POV“You have three minutes before Vincent notices anything is wrong.”Megan appears as the second as Sebastian and I slip into the west service hall. No greeting, no softness, just that. Good.“What changed?” I ask.“Victoria moved the page.” Her voice stays low. “It’s not in the handbag







