Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
MILO
I awoke to the dim light coming through the window.
For a moment, I simply stared at the ceiling, listening to the sound of… nothing. The cabin was quiet—no traffic, none of the constant background noise I was used to in Chicago. It was the kind of silence that made every small sound stand out.
I’ve been here for three days.
Long enough to settle into a routine, but not quite long enough for the silence to feel normal.
I pushed myself upright and swung my legs over the side of the bed, meeting the frigid hardwood floors beneath my feet. I stood there a second, letting myself wake up properly, then crossed to the window and pulled the curtain aside.
The clearing stretched out in front of the cabin, damp and golden with the early morning sunlight, blanketed by the forest around it.
Everything was… calm.
My attention lingered briefly on the trees, then the curtain fell back into place.
The coffee tin sat on the counter where I’d left it the night before, next to the same enamel mug I used yesterday. I set water on the stove and lit the burner with a match, just as I’d done the last few days.
While the water heated, I opened the tin and measured out the grounds by instinct, tapping them into the small metal filter I’d found in one of the drawers. It wasn’t precise, but it didn’t need to be.
Mrs. Alvarez had made coffee this way for years—no machines or timers. Just water, heat, and instinct.
Routine helped.
It shaped the morning.
A bird sang somewhere beyond the ridge. A few seconds later, something flitted through the brush—quick, light, and gone before I could make it out.
Probably something small.
I poured the hot water slowly through the grounds and let it drip into the mug, the smell wafting around the room.
Still, the sense that something had moved out there stayed with me.
Reaching for my phone was more out of habit than necessity.
There was no signal–not out here. The screen glowed faintly in the early light, silent and useless.
I turned it face-down beside the coffee tin, but the lack of reception pulled up a different memory instead—Chicago, full bars, endless stacks of notifications.
The night before I left, I’d stood in my apartment staring at the booking confirmation, locked in for two full months. Seeing the dates written out like that made it feel longer than it had when I first clicked “confirm.” I’d never allowed myself to step away from work for so long.
My assistants had been quick to reassure me when I told them. “We’ve got this, Milo.” And they did. They’d been handling events with me for years. Still, I’d gone through the schedule myself, double-checking details and leaving notes where I thought they might need them.
Clients didn’t like unpredictability. Typically, neither did I.
My phone had rung while I was still standing there, thinking it through.
“Hi, Marianne.”
My mother didn’t answer right away. When she did, her tone was even, controlled. “You’re really going through with this?”
I sat down on the edge of the bed. “That’s the plan.”
“You’ve stepped away from the Whitmore luncheon and the Kessler launch,” she explained, like hadn’t tallied up the events on my calendar that I’d be missing. “And Diane mentioned the Caldwell anniversary.”
Diane was one of her friends, and the source of most of our bookings.
“I’m not stepping away. My team is handling them. They’ve been doing this with me for years.”
A brief pause.
“Victor asked me to find out how long this phase is supposed to last,” she spat.
There it was—the same tone they always used. No raised voices, no direct pressure. Just the quiet assumption that my decisions were still open for discussion.
“It’s not a phase.”
“Isn’t it an impulsive decision?” She huffed out a frustrated breath. “We’re just concerned about momentum. This industry moves quickly. Clients move on. You’ve built something stable.”
Stable.
Reliable. Consistent. Safe.
“I know,” I said.
“Your brother never wanted anything to do with the firm,” she continued. “And neither did you, but at least you stayed in Chicago. That proximity mattered.”
Proximity to wealth was what she meant. Money was a virtue in itself as far as my parents were concerned.
“I’m not leaving for good,” I told her. “I’m taking time.”
“For what?”
I stayed where I was, my bag still beside me with one hand resting on the zipper that I couldn’t quite bring myself to pull.
I just didn’t have an answer she would accept.
“To reset.”
She didn’t respond right away. When she did, her voice had gone neutral again. “We assumed you might reconsider.”
I hadn’t.
The decision had felt clearer once I was moving.
I’d only made one stop on the way out of the city. Mrs. Alvarez hadn’t been expecting me, but she pulled me into a hug before I could say more than hello.
“Mijo,” she murmured—my son, in the affectionate way she’d always said it—before pressing a kiss to my cheek. “Siempre tan flaco.” Always so skinny. Then she leaned back, hands still warm against my face. “You don’t eat properly when you’re busy.”
“I eat,” I told her with a guilty smile.
“Mmhmm.” She read right through my lie, her thumbs brushing lightly along my jaw… The way she used to when I was smaller. “You eat, but not like you should.”
I lifted my hand to catch one of hers. “I’m okay.”
She held my hand for a moment, studying my face like she was still deciding whether to believe that.
“I see you,” her voice gentler now. “But not as often as I’d like.
Before it was every day.” She shook her head slightly, a grin pulling at her mouth.
“Now I have to take what I get.” She let her hands fall, but her attention stayed on me.
We sat in her kitchen for about an hour over coffee and arroz con pollo—chicken and rice simmered together with garlic and spices the way she always made it, the scent of it all warm and familiar. She watched until I took the first bite before she seemed satisfied enough to sit back down.
She asked about work, about Elias, and whether I was actually going to rest this time or just tell people I was.
When I told her where I was heading, her expression changed. The smile she’d been holding faded, and her brows drew together slightly as she leaned in, as if the walls were listening.
“Those woods…” she whispered, almost to herself. Then her eyes returned to mine. “You remember what I told you when you were small?”
I kept it light. “About the Bray Road Beast?”
She didn’t smile. “People say they’re just stories,” she said.
“They laugh, say it’s nothing more than a legend.
” Her fingers tapped lightly against the table, once, twice.
“I’ve lived long enough to know when something is real, even if you don’t see it with your own eyes.
” She held my gaze. “You don’t have to see it for it to see you. ”
I… didn’t have a response I deemed valid enough for that.
I kissed her cheek and promised I’d come back to visit soon. She wrapped something up for me that I couldn’t see, pressing it into my hands like she used to and I let her fuss over me on the way out.
The road out of town was quiet. Traffic faded the farther I went, houses thinning out until it was mostly open land and long stretches of trees.
Then I turned onto Bray Road, which narrowed at the entrance. Trees hugged both sides, creating the kind of stretch where your headlights hardly carried past the bend ahead.
My eyes scanned my surroundings out of habit—road, side mirror, rearview.
That was when I saw something.
Off to the right, near the edge of the trees.
For a second, I thought it was a person—someone standing too close to the road, but the figure was too tall and too broad to be… human.
It didn’t move when my car passed.
My grip tightened on the wheel, palms growing sweaty.
I caught it again in the rearview as I went by—only a glimpse this time.
Something standing upright.
And a brief flash where the headlights hit—like eyes reflecting back at me from a very tall person.
My pulse jumped at the sight of something that didn’t make sense.
I looked forward again, the road bending slightly ahead.
Then I checked the mirror once more.
Nothing, just the empty stretch behind me and the extensive span of the forest.
I kept driving.
After a few seconds, I let out a breath and shook my head.
It could have been a fence post. Or a piece of farm equipment set back from the road. Something catching the light at the wrong angle.
Those made more sense.
They had to.
Or I’d let Mrs. Alvarez’s stories get into my head.
I didn’t check the mirror again. There wasn’t any point.
The stove crackled softly as the memory of the drive faded. I took slow slips of coffee, only setting the mug down once my insides warmed.
The space was simple but functional. My boots sat by the door, still marked with dried mud from the day before. My camera sat on the small table by the window, batteries charging beside it. Everything was lined up exactly how I liked it .
I got ready leisurely—jacket, gear, a quick bite from the food Mrs. Alvarez had sent with me. Enough to hold me over until later.
Outside, the rising sun chased away the lingering chill from the morning. The clearing stretched quiet, grass still damp, the ridge rising beyond it.
I stepped off the porch, camera in hand, and headed toward the trail.
The forest wasn’t loud, but it wasn’t silent either. A woodpecker worked somewhere deeper in the trees. Something small moved through the underbrush and disappeared before I could focus on it. A crane called once in the distance.
I didn’t rush to take photos.
I let myself walk for a while first, getting a feel for the ground and the way the light moved through the trees. When I finally lifted the camera, I kept it simple—bark catching the sun, new buds blooming along the branches, a line of shadow cutting across the slope.
Further in, I spotted a deer grazing at the edge of a clearing. She hadn’t noticed me yet. I raised the camera slowly and zoomed in, adjusting the focus until the shape sharpened in the viewfinder.
Just as I pressed the shutter, something shifted beyond where the deer stood.
Deeper in the trees.
Something darker.
Heart pounding, I lowered the camera and looked directly.
Nothing but trunks and shadow layered exactly the way they should have been.
The deer lifted its head a second later and wandered off casually, disappearing into the brush.
I stood there a moment longer, listening, then continued along the ridge.
By the time I returned to the cabin, the sun had climbed higher in the sky. The light was harsher during that time of the day, less forgiving in the way that flattened detail instead of shaping it.
Inside, I set the camera on the table and opened my laptop, scrolling through the shots as they loaded.
Most of them were exactly what I expected. Clean, usable, nothing I’d have to fight in post. Then I stopped on the frame with the deer.
At first glance, it looked fine.
Then I saw it.
In the background, between two trees—something faint but distinct enough to pull the eye.
I leaned closer and adjusted the screen.
Two small points of reflected light.
Evenly spaced, positioned too high off the ground to belong to anything small.
I zoomed in closer.
The image got grainy the closer I pushed it, the details starting to blur—but those two bright points in the background stayed exactly where they were.
I leaned closer to the screen and pulled back to the full image again and looked at that section of the trees.
There was nothing there. No branches thin enough to catch light like that. Nothing reflective.
I sat back slowly.
It could be nothing, or simply a trick of the light, something I missed when I took the shot.
I’d spent enough years behind a camera to know photographs didn’t always tell the whole truth, but the longer I looked at it, the less that explanation held.