33. Keira
KEIRA
N ina thinks shopping will distract me.
Bless her optimism.
She ushers me into the back of the Bentley like I’m some delicate, breakable thing that just needs a bit of silk and retail air to fix what’s broken.
I don’t argue. It’s easier that way. I nod, smile when prompted, let her believe I’m playing along.
But my thoughts haven’t been off Riley since the detectives walked out the door.
My father’s been missing for two days, and suddenly the cops care what happened to her. Convenient timing. Convenient questions.
And too many of them are aimed at me.
The boutique is high-end, of course. Sforza Couture.
All soft lighting and hushed voices, like a church that worships money.
Dresses that cost more than most people’s rent hang on chrome racks like offerings.
Nina’s in her element, murmuring with the tailor, hands trailing over silk and velvet like she’s composing a symphony.
Lionel posts up near the entrance—silent, alert. He’s not the type to blink, let alone get distracted. Which makes what I’m about to do extremely stupid. But necessary.
I step into the change room with a handful of dresses and a hollow smile. The curtain is drawn but all I notice is how gleaming the mirror is. It’s immaculate. The moment I hear the sales ladies’s voice recede down the hall, my heart kicks into gear.
I count thirty seconds, then duck low before I slip out the side of the cubicle and down the staff hallway.
I exit the back entrance of the boutique like a ghost—hoodie up, bag clutched tight, heart pounding like I’ve just pulled off a heist instead of a getaway.
The city blinks under a dull overcast sky, as though holding its breath.
Sorry, Nina.
I walk.
One block. Then two.
Every step feels stolen.
My boots click against the wet pavement, loud in the silence between passing cars. I keep my head down, eyes flicking from shadow to shadow. Paranoia hums like static under my skin—thin, sharp, relentless. I don’t see anyone following me, but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.
Lionel’s probably realized I’m gone by now.
And Nina—God, Nina—she’ll pivot from gracious socialite to wartime general the second she clocks my disappearance.
I can practically hear her heels clicking across the floor as she pulls her phone, pearls rattling against her throat like warning beads.
Her first call will be to Jayson—no question.
Beneath the cashmere cardigans and grandmotherly smile, there’s tempered steel in that woman—polished, ruthless, and willing to bend the world in half if it keeps her family safe.
I’ve just made myself her newest emergency, and I can’t decide if that terrifies me…
or makes me feel the slightest bit safer .
I reach the main road and raise my hand for a cab.
It takes longer than it should. Drivers glance, hesitate, keep going. Maybe I look like trouble. I’m starting to feel like I am.
Finally, a yellow taxi pulls up, tires spitting water as it stops beside me. The driver eyes me warily through the cracked window.
“Where to?” he asks.
I slide into the back seat, the upholstery damp and slightly sticky. The door closes with a thunk that feels too final.
I give him the address.
I’m going home.
He pulls into traffic, windshield wipers dragging across the glass with a tired squeal.
The city starts to blur past, all gray concrete and glass buildings whose towers soar into the sky. I sink back into the seat, trying to slow my breathing.
But it’s useless.
Riley’s face is burned behind my eyelids. I have to get home and find out for myself if my father had anything to do with Riley’s disappearance.
Some doors aren’t meant to be opened, Keira. So you keep saying, asshole.
There are two wars being waged inside me. One where I want to know, I want closure. And the other where I’m not sure I can handle the truth of what happened that night.
Why is my memory blank when it comes to that night?
The cab turns off the main road, and the world begins to slow.
The hum of traffic fades behind us. Buildings thin out.
The air feels heavier here—denser, like it knows what’s coming.
The trees lean in close, their bare branches arching over the street like they’re trying to warn me to turn back.
The fences along the sidewalk sag with age, wood rotting at the base, iron rusted like old blood.
Everything starts to look familiar. Too familiar. And wrong.
I sit up straighter, hand braced against the back of the seat as my eyes scan the houses. We pass Riley’s old place—a single-story Colonial with peeling shutters and a caved-in porch step. It looks like a shell now. Hollow. Quiet. Forgotten.
Her mother moved out not long after Riley vanished. Packed a single bag, got in her car, and drove away like she already knew what the rest of us were too afraid to say out loud.
She knew. She knew Riley wasn’t coming back.
My chest tightens, breath catching at the base of my throat. A hot ache swells behind my eyes, but I don’t blink. I won’t. Because I need to see this through. I need to feel it. Even if it guts me.
Because if the truth is buried in that house—my house—I don’t want to leave without it. Even if it tears open every part of me I’ve spent years trying to stitch shut. Even if it means unmaking who I am just to understand what really happened to her.
The tires crunch over wet leaves, the sound sharp and unforgiving in the silence.
The engine hums low, a growl beneath the stillness, like it knows we shouldn’t be here.
We move slow—too slow—as if the car itself is reluctant to carry us forward.
Like it's dragging its wheels through mud and memory.
And then I see it. The house. The one that raised me. The one that swallowed me whole.
It used to feel familiar. Safe, even. The paint chipped at the corners, the shutters always slightly crooked—details I once found charming in a way only nostalgia can excuse.
But now… everything is tinted with unease.
My brain’s gone and rewired itself, stitched horror into the wallpaper, nailed dread into the doorframe .
This house isn’t mine anymore. Not since a body bled out in its shadow. Not since someone vanished into its silence and never came back.
It stands there now like a stranger wearing my childhood like a mask—close enough to touch, but wrong in all the ways that matter. A wolf dressed in the bones of better days.
I used to call it home.
Now it just feels like it houses ghosts.
The taxi pulls to a stop out front, and I stare at it—stone gray, tall, silent.
The windows are dark and cold, lifeless eyes watching me from behind sheer curtains.
Ivy coils up the porch columns like veins, choking the house inch by inch.
It’s always been beautiful in the way old things are beautiful—stately, intimidating.
But now it just looks like a tribute to a bygone era. A makeshift graveyard.
Riley disappeared here. My father died here. And somehow, I was shaped in the space between those two ghosts.
My gaze drifts to the porch swing—still creaking faintly in the wind, like muscle memory. I used to sneak Riley popsicles during the summer, and she’d sit there barefoot, mouth stained cherry red, laughing like the world was hers and she couldn’t imagine a reason to be afraid.
She was fearless. Until one day she was gone. Just… gone. And now, I’m back. And I won’t leave until I tear every rotten secret from the bones of this house.
I open the door and step out of the cab.
The street behind me falls away like a sound cut mid-note. The silence here is thicker. More personal. As if the neighborhood itself knows I don’t belong anymore.
I walk up the path slowly, every step heavier than the last.
The house, despite its age, has been kept in perfect order. The lawn is neatly trimmed, hedges squared off, flower beds still lined with mulch. And now it all just… waits .
I veer left toward the side gate. It still sticks like it used to, not from rust, just a bad hinge. I lift and shove, just like always, and it pops open with a soft groan. My boots land quietly on the flagstone path, and I slip around the back where the service door is tucked beneath the overhang.
I take out the brass key from my pocket and put it in the lock. It slides in smooth. The lock turns. The door opens.
And in that instant, I’m thirteen again—smaller, quieter, trying to breathe around the tension that used to live in these walls.
Even though I was here just a week ago—the day I skipped uni and Jayson tracked me down—it feels like years have passed. Like I’m stepping into a memory instead of a house.
The scent hits me first. Still the same. Clean. Too clean. Lemon polish and lavender oil—something Nina would nod at with approval. But beneath it lingers something harder to name.
An echo. A weight. Like the house remembers everything I’ve tried to forget.
I flick on the hallway light. The power’s still on. But it doesn’t feel warm, or safe. It feels clinical. Yet it still feels like I’m walking into a crime scene scrubbed too clean.
I shut the door behind me. Click.
The living room is untouched. The furniture is exactly as I remember it.
No dusty sheets, no cobwebs. Cushions plumped.
A book left face-down on the armrest like someone meant to return.
The fireplace has been cleaned recently.
The air feels too still, like the last breath was held and never released.
The dining room is polished mahogany. That table. Long. Formal. Terrifying.
My eyes drift to the right-hand corner—just past the head of the table. A shallow scar still mars the wood where I once dug my nails in, refusing to cry. I trace it without meaning to.
You cry, I add a minute, Father had said, voice smooth, even .
He always delivered cruelty with perfect posture.
I back away, hand falling to my side.