Chapter 6
The Blackwell lake house had been empty for years.
Officially.
Too damp.
Too isolated.
Too inconvenient.
Perfect place for inconvenient relatives.
I left the gala before midnight.
Rose came.
Mila insisted.
I allowed it.
Bianca stayed behind.
Nathan under guard.
The lake house smelled closed.
Old wood.
Cold stone.
We searched.
No Elias.
Of course.
But one room had been used.
Mattress.
Books.
A broken lamp.
Scratches near the inside of the door.
Not dramatic chains.
Not torture chamber.
Containment.
Worse in a different way.
On the desk:
Three notebooks.
Elias’s handwriting.
I knew instantly.
Same angular letters as my father.
First pages angry.
Confused.
Then precise.
He documented dates.
Visitors.
Nathan.
Conrad.
Bianca once.
That stopped me.
She came here?
I kept reading.
Entry:
Bianca brought food. Would not look at me. Said she was sorry. Says Father believes I left.
Another:
Roman still doesn’t know. Nathan says telling him will destabilize succession.
My throat closed.
My brother had known about me his whole life.
I had known nothing.
Then:
Father’s medicine was changed. Not enough to kill. Enough to cloud him. Conrad calls it “management.”
There.
Not murder.
Manipulation through impairment.
Then the final entry.
Conrad offered me a choice.
Disappear permanently under another name or be exposed as the bastard trying to seize Roman’s position.
I refused both.
Then:
Bianca says she can get a message to Roman.
No later entry.
I looked at Mila.
“Did she?”
Mila shook her head.
She never heard.
Then Rose found something inside the desk drawer.
An envelope addressed to me.
Unopened.
My name.
Five years old.
Inside:
Roman—
If this reaches you, don’t believe I want your chair.
I want my father back.
That sentence destroyed something in me.
My brother had been hidden because everyone assumed brothers inevitably become rivals.
He was trying to save the same father I thought I was losing.
May you like
Then the last line:
If Nathan says I left willingly, ask Bianca why she cried when they drove me away.
