The silence Elara left behind in the hallway felt heavy, like the air right before a storm hits.
Those words wouldn't stop ringing in my head. I stood in that small alcove for what felt like hours, staring at the faint red marks her nails had left on my arm. My skin was stinging, but the heat in my chest was worse. Claire was right. I couldn't just sit in that bed and wait for them to decide my fate. If I kept acting like a victim, I was going to end up like whatever ghost Elara was talking about.
I didn't go back to the bedroom. I couldn't bear the smell of the sheets or the memory of how easily I had let Cyprian touch me after everything he'd done. Instead, I walked toward the study.
My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat. This was the one room I was never supposed to enter without him. If this house had a heart of secrets, it was behind those heavy oak doors. I didn't knock. I just pressed my palm against the cold wood and pushed.
The room was dim, lit only by a single green lamp on the desk. It smelled like expensive tobacco and old books. He wasn't there. The leather chair was pushed back, empty.
I moved quickly, my hands trembling as I started opening drawers. Locked. Locked. Locked. I felt like a thief in my own home, but I didn't care. I turned to the tall bookshelves behind the desk and started running my fingers over the spines.
Then I saw it.
Tucked behind a thick row of legal books was a small, black leather ledger. It looked old. The edges were scuffed, and the spine was cracked from being opened a thousand times. I pulled it out and sat on the floor right there, my legs shaking too much to stand.
I flipped to the year 2021.
The handwriting was definitely his sharp, slanted, and aggressive. Most of the pages were just lists of numbers and dates. But then, I found a page with a dried flower petal pressed inside.
June 14th. The transfer is done. She's gone. The agreement stands: no contact, no trace. The price was high, but the bloodline stays pure.
My breath hitched. My eyes moved down the page to a list of payments made to a private clinic, the same one his mother owned.
"Put it down."
The voice didn't come from the door. It came from the corner of the room, near the window.
I jumped so hard I nearly dropped the book. Cyprian was standing there in the shadows. He didn't look tired or calm. He looked like he was vibrating with a strange, frantic energy. His hair was a mess, and his eyes were wide, darting from the book to my face.
"Put it down, Raven," he said again. His voice wasn't a whisper. It was a jagged command.
"Who was she, Cyprian?" I asked, clutching the book to my chest. "What happened five years ago?"
He didn't answer. He started walking toward me. It wasn't a normal walk. It was slow and jerky, like he was barely holding himself together.
"I told you," he said, his voice rising, "don't ever touch my things."
I scrambled to my feet, backing away until my spine hit the edge of the heavy desk. "Elara told me I was just a replacement. She said there was another girl. Another baby. Is that what happened? Did you pay to get rid of them?"
Cyprian let out a sharp, hysterical laugh that made the hair on my arms stand up. He slammed his hands down on the desk on either side of me, pinning me in.
"You think you're special?" he hissed, his face inches from mine. His eyes were bloodshot and frantic. "You think because I put a ring on your finger that you have the right to dig through my trash? You're a guest here. You're here because I let you be here."
"I'm your wife," I whispered, my voice breaking.
"You're a girl I found!" he shouted, the sound echoing off the walls. He was shaking now, his face contorted in a way I'd never seen. "Do you have any idea what I've done to keep this family together? Do you have any idea what it costs to keep people quiet?"
He reached out and grabbed the ledger, wrenching it out of my hands so hard I stumbled. He didn't just put it away. He threw it across the room.
"Never," he said, leaning in so close I could smell the bitter coffee on his breath. "Never come in here again. Never ask about her again. If you snoop around my life one more time, I will lock you in that room and throw away the key. I don't care about the baby. I don't care about the stability. I will break you before I let you ruin me."
He was panting, his chest heaving against mine. For a second, I thought he might actually hit me. He looked completely out of his mind.
Then, he stopped. He blinked, as if he was just realizing where he was. He smoothed his hair back with a shaky hand and straightened his shirt, his expression turning cold and blank in an instant.
"Go to your room, Raven," he said quietly.
"Who was she?" I asked one more time, my voice trembling.
Cyprian looked at me and gave me a smile that didn't reach his eyes. It was the scariest thing I'd ever seen.
"She was someone who didn't know when to stop looking," he said. "Don't be like her."
He turned to leave, but stopped when he saw someone at the door.
Elara was leaning against the frame, holding a glass of red wine. She was watching us with a satisfied smirk, like she was watching a movie she'd seen a dozen times before.
"He's right, you know," she said, taking a slow sip. "The curious ones always end up being the easiest to replace."
Cyprian didn't even look at her as he brushed past and walked into the dark hallway.
I stood there in the middle of the room, my heart cold. Elara looked at me, her eyes gleaming with a dark secret, before she turned and followed him.
I looked at the floor where the ledger lay open. I realized then that I hadn't just discovered a secret. I had discovered that the man I was married to wasn't just a monster….he was someone who was slowly losing his grip on reality, and I was trapped right in the middle of his collapse.