THE STUDY DOOR

CHAPTER 17

I should have walked away.

Instead, I knocked.

Roman looked up.

For a moment, he didn't move at all, as though part of him hadn't fully returned from wherever the files had taken him.

"Mira."

His voice was rough.

His hand moved toward the folder in front of him, closing it almost too quickly.

"What are you investigating?"

His expression hardened.

"It isn't your concern."

"Tessa told me about Lyra."

His jaw tightened.

"About the accident ruling. About the fact that you never accepted it."

"You shouldn't have heard any of this from someone else."

"Then you should have told me."

Silence stretched between us.

Roman looked toward the papers on his desk.

Then back at me.

"Go to bed, Mira."

I didn't move.

His eyes narrowed slightly.

"Why are you still standing there?"

The question sounded almost like an accusation.

"Because I'm tired of finding out who you are from everyone except you."

Something changed in his expression.

Not surrender exactly.

Something quieter.

Something that looked dangerously close to it.

He leaned back in his chair.

"Close the door."

I did.

"The council ruled it an accident," Roman said after I'd taken the chair across from him. "A fall. Nothing more complicated than that."

"But you don't believe it."

"None of it ever added up."

He rubbed a hand over his face.

"The timeline was wrong. She wasn't where she was supposed to be at the time they claimed."

"What do you mean?"

"There was a witness."

His voice tightened.

"Someone who saw something that night. They gave a statement."

"And?"

"Weeks later, they recanted."

I frowned.

"Changed their story completely?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

"I don't know."

He looked at me, and there was something raw behind his eyes.

"I don't know if they lied the first time or the second. I've never been able to prove which."

"You think someone pressured them."

"I think a lot of things I can't prove."

His gaze dropped to the papers scattered across his desk.

"That's the problem."

I studied him.

"Why do you blame yourself?"

He didn't answer immediately.

"Roman."

His shoulders lowered slightly.

"I was supposed to protect her."

His voice was quiet.

"I was her mate. Her Alpha. If something happened to her that night, it happened because I wasn't paying attention to something I should have noticed."

"You can't protect someone from something you don't know exists."

His eyes lifted to mine.

For several seconds, he simply stared at me.

Like I'd said something he'd spent two years refusing to say to himself.

"You've been doing this the entire time?"

"Doing what?"

"Investigating."

His eyes shifted toward the desk.

"Every night I could manage it."

He gestured toward the stacks of documents.

"Old reports. Witness statements. Council records. Medical records. Anything connected to her last few days."

"Two years."

"Two years."

He said it like a confession.

Roman pulled a photograph from one of the stacks.

He placed it carefully in front of me.

"This has bothered me since the beginning."

I looked down.

"I've looked at it a hundred times," he continued.

"What is it?"

"The incident scene. From the original report."

His finger hovered near the photograph without touching it.

"Tell me what you see."

I leaned closer.

At first, it looked exactly like what the report described.

A quiet clearing.

Disturbed ground.

Trees disappearing into gray shadows.

Nothing remarkable.

"What am I looking for?"

"I don't know anymore."

There was exhaustion in his voice that I had never heard before.

"I've stared at this for so long that I don't trust what I'm seeing."

I studied the photograph again.

Not as evidence.

Not as a piece of Roman's investigation.

Just as a picture.

My eyes moved slowly across the clearing.

The trees.

The ground.

The path.

The broken branches.

Then I stopped.

"Wait."

Roman leaned forward.

I pointed toward the lower edge of the photograph.

"This branch."

"What about it?"

"I'm not sure."

I looked closer.

"It seems... wrong."

Roman's expression sharpened.

"Wrong how?"

I traced the shape with my eyes.

"The way it's broken."

He said nothing.

"If it fell naturally, I'd expect the break to look different."

I hesitated.

"I'm not an investigator, Roman. I could be completely wrong."

"Keep going."

I swallowed.

"The branch seems to have broken from above."

My finger moved slightly along the photograph.

"But the report says Lyra fell from the opposite direction."

Roman went very still.

"Unless..."

I stopped.

"Unless what?"

I looked at him.

"Unless the branch was moved."

Silence.

Roman reached for the written report.

He scanned the pages quickly.

Then he looked back at the photograph.

His eyes moved between them.

"There's no mention of a branch."

"None?"

He shook his head.

"Not once."

"Maybe it wasn't considered important."

"Maybe."

His voice had changed.

He looked at the photograph again.

"But if it was there, it should have been documented."

I nodded.

"Unless whoever took the photograph didn't think it mattered."

Roman's fingers tightened around the edge of the report.

"Or unless it wasn't part of the scene when the report was written."

The room went quiet.

I looked at him.

"You've never noticed it?"

"I've looked at this photograph more times than I can count."

He sounded almost frustrated with himself.

"But I was looking for something that proved what happened."

His eyes returned to the branch.

"Not something that simply didn't belong."

I didn't know what to say.

"Maybe that's why."

He looked at me.

"Why what?"

"Maybe you were too close to it."

His expression tightened.

"You mean I couldn't see it."

"I mean you've been looking at it through the same question for two years."

I touched the edge of the photograph.

"I wasn't."

His eyes stayed on mine.

"What were you looking for?"

"I wasn't looking for anything."

A faint smile touched my lips.

"I was just looking."

For the first time that night, something almost softened in his face.

"Two years," he murmured.

I looked at him.

"I've had investigators. Trackers. People who spent years studying scenes like this."

He shook his head.

"And none of them noticed the branch."

"Maybe they were looking for proof of what happened."

I glanced down.

"I was just looking at what was actually there."

Roman didn't answer.

He was looking at me now instead of the photograph.

The intensity in his eyes made my pulse shift.

"You don't have to do this alone," I said quietly.

His expression changed.

"I don't know how to do it any other way."

"You could start by letting someone sit beside you."

Something passed through his eyes.

Something I couldn't name.

Neither of us moved.

Then we both reached for the report at the same time.

Our fingers brushed.

Neither of us pulled away.

The room seemed to become impossibly quiet.

I could hear his breathing.

I could hear mine.

Then Roman slowly withdrew his hand.

"If someone moved that branch..."

I looked at him.

"Then the scene may not have been exactly as they claimed."

His voice was low.

"It doesn't prove someone killed her."

"But it means the official version might be wrong."

"Yes."

He looked down at the photograph.

"Which means I may have been asking the wrong question."

Before I could respond, Roman turned the photograph slightly.

His eyes stopped.

His breathing changed.

"Roman?"

He didn't answer.

He picked up the photograph and brought it closer to the lamp.

Near the base of one of the trees was a faint impression.

Something barely visible against the grain of the image.

"What is that?"

"I thought it was damage."

He ran his thumb along the edge of the photograph without touching the mark itself.

"But it's too deliberate."

I leaned closer.

The shape was indistinct.

Almost like a mark pressed into the ground.

Almost like something had been left there.

"Can you tell what it is?"

Roman shook his head.

"Not yet."

He stared at it for several seconds.

Then his face changed.

Not shock.

Not anger.

Recognition.

Or the beginning of it.

"Roman?"

His eyes lifted to mine.

For the first time since I'd entered the study, I saw something close to fear in them.

Not fear for himself.

Fear of what the mark might mean.

"I've seen this before."

My heart stopped.

"Where?"

He didn't answer.

His gaze dropped to the photograph again.

Then to the papers covering his desk.

And suddenly, the room felt much colder.

Because whatever Roman had just remembered, I knew one thing for certain.

He hadn't been searching for this mark.

The mark had been waiting for him to notice it.