What Clara Hid

Anastasia’s POV

The box was already waiting on the table when I walked into the room, and for a moment, I simply stood there staring at it.

After everything we’d been through to find it, seeing that old wooden box beneath the harsh white light made my stomach twist. It looked exactly as I remembered, right down to the worn edges and the small brass lock that had fascinated me as a child.

Jaxon stood beside the table with his arms folded across his chest, while Rafe guarded the door and Maisie watched me from the edge of a chair.

Nobody said anything.

I finally forced my trembling legs forward, the floorboards groaning under my weight. "So that's it."

Jaxon nodded slowly, his eyes heavy with an unreadable weight. "We found it less than twenty minutes ago. Abandoned in the back of a vehicle near the old service road."

"Someone just... left it there?" I asked, a wave of cold panic prickling across my skin.

"Or orchestrated it so we'd find it," Jaxon replied softly.

Rafe pushed off the doorframe, his voice low and grim. "We swept the vehicle twice. No driver, no prints, no trace. Clean as a whistle."

My pulse hammered in my ears as I turned back to Jaxon. "You're sure it's untouched?"

"As sure as we can be." He held out his hand, palm up, a quiet invitation.

He held out his hand for the silver key I’d been carrying since leaving my room. I placed it in his palm, and he crouched beside the box, sliding the key carefully into the lock. My heart beat so fast.  The key turned with a soft click and Jaxon lifted the lid. The smell of old wood and dust rose from inside, carrying with it a strange sense of familiarity. I leaned over the table, expecting to find something that would explain everything.

Instead, I found photographs. Dozens of them. I picked up the first one, my fingers trembling slightly. It was my mother. She looked younger than I had ever known her, standing outside a building I didn’t recognize with a smile on her face and one hand resting against the arm of someone who had been cropped from the photograph. I flipped through more. There were pictures of Clara in places I’d never seen, London streets, a large estate surrounded by iron gates, expensive restaurants, hotels, and several unfamiliar faces that seemed to appear more than once.

“These names,” I murmured.

Beneath the photographs sat several documents covered with names and handwritten notes. Some were typed, others written in a hurried hand, but none meant anything to me.

“Who are these people?” Jaxon picked up one of the papers and studied it.

“Some of these names are familiar.”

Rafe moved closer. “To you?”

“Not personally,” Jaxon said. “But I’ve heard them mentioned.”

“Where?”

His expression hardened.

“The criminal network.”

My stomach dropped.

“So my mother knew these people?”

“Apparently.”

Maisie leaned across the table and pointed toward something beneath the documents.

“What about that?”

I followed her gaze and found a small silver pendant lying against the bottom of the box.

I picked it up. The chain was old, but the pendant itself was beautifully made, with a tiny crest engraved into the front. When I turned it over, I found a single letter carved into the back.

D.

“Do you recognize it?” Jaxon asked.

“No.”

I ran my thumb over the engraving.

There was something familiar about the symbol, although I couldn’t place where I’d seen it before. I was about to put the pendant down when a photograph beneath it caught my attention. My breath caught.

“Jaxon.”

He looked over. I lifted the photograph.It was Clara, but she wasn’t alone. Standing beside her was a much younger Jaxon. He couldn’t have been more than twenty-nine or thirty. His face was harder than the one I knew now, his hair slightly longer, but there was no mistaking him. I looked from the photograph to the man standing across the table.

"You knew her," I whispered, the words tasting like ash. "Before she died. You were... together?"

Jaxon's eyes snapped up, a flicker of genuine shock crossing his face before he smoothed it over. "No. Never that."

"Then why are you with her?" My voice rose, laced with the unbearable hurt of being the last to know my own life. "She trusted you."

"She helped me. Years ago," he said tightly, reaching out to take the photo from my grip. His hand lingered near mine for a fraction of a second, his dark eyes brimming with an unspoken, agonizing remorse. "That’s all I can tell you right now, Anastasia."

I studied him, then looked back at the photograph. What bothered me wasn’t that Clara had known him. It was the way she looked at him. There was trust in her expression. The same kind of trust she’d apparently placed in him when she’d handed over the key to my future. I reached for another photograph, but my fingers stopped halfway.

One of them had been deliberately torn down the middle. Only half remained. The visible portion showed Clara standing beside a man whose face had been ripped away. I could see part of his dark suit and the edge of a sign behind them, but nothing else.

“Who is this?”

Jaxon took the photograph from me. His expression changed the moment he saw it.

“That’s Victor Devereaux.”The name meant nothing to me. The room seemed to go quiet. Rafe exchanged a look with Maisie before looking at Jaxon.

“You know him?” Jaxon didn’t answer immediately.

“Everyone in our world knows the Devereaux name.” My stomach tightened.

“What kind of world?” His eyes met mine.

“The kind your mother spent years keeping you away from.” I stared at the torn photograph, trying to make sense of a man I’d never heard of appearing in my mother’s secret life. Then I noticed the envelope beneath the remaining photographs. My name was written across the front. Not Anastasia Grace. Just Anastasia. My hands went cold. I picked it up carefully, almost afraid that touching it would somehow make the past more real. After all these years, she had left something specifically for me.

“It’s for me.”

Jaxon stepped closer.

“Don’t open it alone.”

I met his eyes.

“I won’t.”

I tore open the envelope.

Inside was a single folded letter. My hands shook as I unfolded it, and the moment I saw the first line, my chest tightened.

My dearest Anastasia,

I swallowed hard. For a moment, I couldn’t make myself read further. Then I forced my eyes down the page.

If you’re reading this, then something has happened to me, and the life I built for you is no longer safe.

My vision blurred. I blinked rapidly and continued.

There are things about your father that I never told you. Things I wanted to take to my grave because knowing them would put you in danger.

My fingers tightened around the paper.

My father.

After years of knowing almost nothing about the man who had given me half of my existence, I was finally looking at the beginning of an answer. I read the next line.

His name is—

The lights went out. My scream tore through the room as something crashed against the table. Jaxon caught my arm immediately.

“Stay down!”

Rafe drew his weapon, while Maisie moved behind the table. The room disappeared into darkness, and for a second, all I could hear was the frantic pounding of my own heart.

“Everyone stay where you are,” Jaxon ordered.

I gripped the letter so tightly the paper crumpled beneath my fingers.

Then I heard a movement somewhere in the darkness. A chair scraped against the floor.

“Jaxon,” Rafe said sharply.

“I heard it.”

Footsteps moved across the room, quick and deliberate. Then everything went silent. The emergency lights flickered on, flooding the room with a dim red glow. Jaxon was beside me instantly.

“Are you hurt?”

I shook my head. “No.”

Rafe checked the door.

“Still locked.”

Maisie looked around the room, confusion written across her face.

“Then how did someone move?”

Jaxon turned toward the table. The box was still there. The photographs remained scattered across the surface, and the silver pendant hadn’t moved. But something was missing. I looked down at the documents..

“Jaxon…”

He followed my gaze. The document bearing Victor Devereaux’s name was gone. For a moment, nobody spoke. Then Jaxon’s expression hardened.

“Lock the compound down.”

Rafe was already reaching for his radio. I stared at the empty space where the document had been, unable to shake the realization settling over me. We hadn’t been alone in this room. Someone had been close enough to reach the table while the lights were out. Someone had known exactly what they wanted. And whoever it was hadn’t escaped the compound.

They were still inside with us.