All Chapters of Too Late To Love Me : Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

Valarie's POVElle's calm did not last as a silence. It sharpened, almost at once, into words."Let go of me," she said, twisting her arm free from Caspian's grip. Her voice was no longer soft or broken. It was clear and fast, like she had already rehearsed this moment somewhere in her mind. "You think this is fair? You think you get to blame me alone?""You suggested it," Caspian snapped. "You dared her to get in.""I suggested a game!" Elle's eyes flashed, wet and wide again, though I no longer trusted a single tear that fell from them. "I never built anything. I never sealed anything shut. Who built the coffin, Caspian? Who sewed the burial clothes? Who filled it with flowers and carried her inside and closed the lid?" She looked around at all three of them, one at a time. "All of you were there. Every single one of you touched that coffin before I ever said a word into my camera. If I killed her, then so did you.""That's not the same," Gerald said, though his voice had lost some

Valarie's POVI floated through that bright hallway, screaming with everything I had left, though I no longer had lungs to fill or a voice to carry the sound.Look at her. Look at her face. She's smiling.Nothing moved. Nothing changed. The words stayed trapped inside me, useless, invisible, exactly like I had been for most of my life in that house, except now it was permanent.I drifted closer to Mabel as she picked up a pen with a shaking hand. I tried to push against the paper, tried to will it to slide off the table, tried anything at all that might make someone stop and ask why. My hand passed straight through it like mist through a window screen. I tried to touch Gerald's shoulder. I tried to whisper into Osborne's ear, even though I had no breath to whisper with. Nothing worked. I was a thought without a voice, a hand without a shape, a girl without a body standing in the middle of her own funeral arrangements.One by one, the staff signed their names. Mabel's hand trembled so

Ariana's POVThe room was dark except for the single lamp hanging over the board, and the light fell in a tight circle over dozens of photographs pinned in careful rows. Faces. Names. Dates. A whole family laid bare in paper and ink, the way I had learned to take apart every target long before I ever cared about one this personally.At the center of it all was her face.Elle Fernandez.I stood in front of the board with my arms crossed, staring at that photograph until the edges of it blurred, and behind it, in my mind, another face kept surfacing. Smaller. Younger. Round cheeks and dark eyes, the last image I had of a sister I had spent almost two decades trying to find.I was ten years old the night everything ended. There had been an accident, sudden and merciless, the kind that takes both parents in the same breath and leaves nothing behind but paperwork and strangers deciding what happens to the children left standing in the wreckage. My sister was only four. I remember holding h

Valarie's POV"You need to stop scaring yourself," the second maid said, shaking her head at her friend. "With everything that's happened this week, this house has everyone jumping at shadows. Miss Valarie's death, the funeral, the whispers going around downstairs. It's enough to make anyone's mind play tricks.""I know what fear looks like," the first maid said stubbornly, lowering her voice further. "This wasn't that. Her dress moved like it was real. I could hear the fabric. And her face—"A soft cough cut through the kitchen.Both maids spun around so fast that one of them knocked a plate clean off the counter. It shattered against the tile floor, the sound sharp and sudden in the quiet room.Elle stood in the doorway, arms crossed, her face unreadable."Sorry to interrupt," she said, her voice pleasant on the surface, though something colder moved underneath it. "Please, continue. I'd love to hear more about the ghosts wandering my house."The maid who had dropped the plate scram

Valarie's POVElle's face went pale beneath the gray afternoon light, her eyes darting once toward the empty space above her own head, exactly where the old woman's gaze had settled a moment ago. For one heartbeat, I thought she might actually ask a question, might actually want to understand what the woman meant.Instead, she laughed. It came out thin and forced."You're insane," she said, already backing away toward the curb. "A bride's spirit? What is that supposed to even mean?"The old woman said nothing else. She simply watched Elle retreat, her expression unreadable, and then she turned back to her basket as if the conversation had already ended in her mind.A taxi rolled up moments later, and Elle climbed inside quickly, giving the driver an address that was not our home. I hesitated only a second before slipping through the closed door and settling beside her, curious despite the unease still coiling inside me from the old woman's stare.We did not drive toward the mansion. T