The Letter that shouldn't exist.

I woke up with the torn photograph still burning behind my eyes, Blake's words looping through my mind like a warning I could not shake. Before everything changed. Whatever secret this house was guarding, I was certain now it reached far beyond Katherine's death.

It touched Mom. It touched Victor. Something enormous had happened years ago, and somehow I had landed right in the middle of it without ever being told the rules.

Breakfast was tense in a way that had nothing to do with the food. Victor kept glancing at his phone, announcing he had an overseas call that would force him to leave early. Mom nodded along, but her attention was somewhere else entirely, and her hand trembled just slightly as she poured the coffee.

At the far end of the table, Blake picked at his plate without really eating, refusing to look my way. Once, our eyes met by accident, and he turned his gaze aside so quickly it felt like a door slamming shut.

I finished eating fast and excused myself. I needed something to occupy my hands so my mind would stop circling the same unanswered questions.

I found Mrs. Carter upstairs, elbow deep in another forgotten storage cabinet, and offered to help her sort through it. She thanked me and told me to toss anything broken or useless, since the house had no shortage of junk already.

We worked in comfortable silence for a while, and I made myself a quiet promise that I was done digging for clues, done chasing shadows that only led to more shadows. Then I lifted a heavy wooden box and felt the bottom shift beneath my palms in a way that solid wood should not shift. A false bottom.

I glanced toward Mrs. Carter, who was absorbed in her own corner of the room, and carefully worked the panel open. Inside sat a sealed envelope, yellowed with age, the paper soft at the edges the way old things get. Across the front, in handwriting I did not recognize, someone had written a single line: To Katherine. If anything happens to me, destroy this before anyone else reads it. There was no signature.

My pulse jumped immediately. I knew the right thing to do was hand it straight to Mrs. Carter, and I even rose halfway to my feet with that intention. But curiosity pulled harder than conscience, and I slipped behind a tall shelf where no one could see me before easing the envelope open.

The letter inside was handwritten, the ink faded in places to the point of near illegibility. I squinted and pieced together what fragments I could. She must never discover who she really is. Victor can never know. If the truth comes out. Protect the child.

I was reaching for the final page when footsteps sounded behind me. Mrs. Carter appeared around the shelf to tell me lunch was ready downstairs. I shoved the letter back into its envelope and buried it inside the wooden box, telling her I was coming, hoping my voice sounded steadier than I felt.

My hands were still unsteady by the time I sat down for lunch. Blake had come home unexpectedly and spent the entire meal watching me from across the table. Victor talked about business, though I could not have repeated a word of it if asked. Mom seemed on edge too, like she could sense something in the air even if she could not name it.

Victor finally asked if I was alright, noting that I looked tired. I told him I was fine, just distracted, and offered a small smile that felt thin even to me. Blake said nothing, but I could feel the weight of his stare the entire time.

After lunch he caught me alone in the hallway, stepping close enough that no one else could overhear. He asked, quietly, what I had found. I told him I did not know what he meant, and he studied my face with the kind of focus that made lying feel pointless. He said I was hiding something, that he could see it plainly. I shot back that maybe he was the one hiding everything, and for a moment the air between us went taut.

He stepped closer still, and for one unsteady second it looked like he might reach for my arm the way he had the night of the storm. Instead his hand curled into a fist at his side, and he took a step back, telling me softly to stop chasing ghosts. I asked him what I was supposed to do if the ghosts were the ones chasing me. He had no answer for that. He only looked at me for a long, unreadable moment before walking away.

Sleep never came that night. I lay awake until the house fell completely silent, then slipped back down to the storage room, determined to finish reading the letter. But when I pried open the wooden box, the envelope was gone. Someone had already taken it.

I stood frozen for a moment, disbelief settling into my chest. As I turned to leave, I noticed muddy footprints tracked across the floor, still damp enough to catch the light. They led directly toward the forbidden wing.

My stomach dropped. I was not the only person in the Knight Mansion searching for the truth. Someone else moved through these halls at night, erasing evidence before I could ever reach it.

I followed the footprints down the corridor, my heart slamming against my ribs with every step. They stopped squarely in front of the locked door. Whoever had taken that letter was inside that room right now.

I leaned in and pressed my ear to the wood, catching only the faint suggestion of movement on the other side, nothing clear enough to make sense of. Part of me wanted to knock. Part of me wanted to shove the door open and demand answers. But I knew exactly how furious Blake would be if he caught me there again, and that thought was enough to root me in place.

I stepped back slowly, watching the muddy prints already beginning to dry at the edges. In a few hours there would be no trace they had ever existed.

I hurried to my room and locked the door behind me, then sat curled on my bed with my knees drawn to my chest, the fragments of that letter circling endlessly in my head. Protect the child. She must never discover who she really is.

Was that child me?

I stared up into the darkness, turning the question over and over. Someone in this house was always one step ahead, always aware of exactly what I was looking for, always cleaning up the past before I could get close enough to touch it.

But I was not going to stop. Not now.

The secrets were closing in, and somewhere along the way, they had stopped feeling like the house's secrets and started feeling like mine.