Chapter 39
Thirty-Nine
Ellie
The security code hasn’t changed.
That’s the first thing I notice when the keypad beeps under my fingertips and the heavy front door of my father’s penthouse
clicks open. I don't hesitate—just slip inside, closing the door behind me as quietly as I can.
The penthouse is exactly as I remember it: cold, cavernous, painfully curated. Every surface gleams, from the black marble
floors to the chrome and glass furniture. It smells faintly of cedar and something sharper—money, maybe, if money had a scent.
I move fast. I know my father’s routine; I know he won't be back until after seven—if he comes home at all.
The first floor yields nothing—just the same sterile living room, the massive empty kitchen, the closed-off study. I search
anyway, brushing my fingers over the bookshelves, the locked liquor cabinets. Everything staged, everything hollow.
It’s only when I reach the back hallway, the one leading to the old servants’ quarters, that my pulse spikes. Growing up,
my father always kept the door to the hallway locked, claiming the servants’ quarters was just for storage. I'd never questioned
it.
Now, the door is cracked open. I slip inside.
The air smells stale, untouched. Dust motes spiral in the shafts of afternoon light slipping through narrow, high windows.
The cramped hallway leads to a small, bare room—and inside, chaos.
Boxes stacked floor to ceiling. Folders spilling their contents across the floor. A battered metal filing cabinet with drawers
half-open. I step closer.
The first box I check is filled with thick manila folders stamped with the seal of Greystone Psychiatric—the facility where
my father said my mother died.
I pull out a file and flip it open.
Subject: Valeria Thomas. Diagnosis: Acute Delusional Disorder. Paranoia. Emotional Instability. Violent tendencies.
Page after page of medical jargon. Incident reports. Psychiatric evaluations. Redacted sections so heavy with black ink the
pages look burned.
I dig deeper. Another box, filled with surveillance photos—of me.
Me at five years old, holding a popsicle in the park. Me at seven, walking into my elementary school. Me at ten, sitting alone
at the edge of a soccer field.
All dated. All cataloged. As if I were a specimen under observation. My stomach twists.
I rifle through the folders, heart pounding harder with every discovery. Some of the files detail treatments approved by my father—sedatives prescribed without my mother’s consent. There are notes about her “declining cooperation.” Recommendations for “permanent solutions.”
Permanent solutions.
I press my knuckles against my mouth, willing down the nausea rising in my throat.
My father didn’t just commit my mother.
He orchestrated her erasure.
I shove the files into my bag, my hands shaking. There's something else gnawing at the edges of my mind. Something more.
The closet door at the back of the servants’ room is slightly ajar. I cross the room in two steps and tug it open fully. Inside:
nothing but a dusty floor, peeling walls, and a loose floorboard. My breath catches.
I drop to my knees and wedge my fingers under the edge of the plank, prying it up. Dust fills my nose, making my eyes water.
Beneath the floorboard lies a single, battered object: a leather journal, the spine cracked and the corners worn soft with
time. I lift it out carefully, like it might fall apart in my hands. The name scrawled inside the front cover makes my heart
break: Valeria Thomas.
I sit back against the wall and crack it open, flipping past the first few empty pages until the inked words begin, messy
and desperate.
April 17
I don't know who to trust anymore. I hear them at night—the clicks on the phone line, the whispers behind closed doors. Even
when I’m smiling at the charity luncheons, they’re watching me.
May 2
Daniel says I’m imagining things. That I’m stressed. That I need a rest. He’s started suggesting medication. “Just to help,”
he says. Help with what? Forgetting?
May 19
My mother was right. Men like him—men of power, of greed, of privilege—they don’t love like we do. Love isn't love to them.
It's ownership. A means to an end. She warned me before the wedding. I didn’t listen.
June 4
I think he’s setting me up. Gaslighting me. Things go missing: my jewelry, letters, my birth control pills. When I ask, he
laughs and kisses my forehead and tells me I must have misplaced them. I can't breathe sometimes, like the walls are closing
in. I feel trapped in this golden cage he built. And I can’t tell anyone. Because who would ever believe me over him?
I want to stop reading, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Entry after entry paints a picture not of a deranged woman, but of a woman being systematically broken down. Stripped of her
autonomy. Isolated. Made to doubt her own reality.
Exactly what Jack—and Aubrey—are doing to me now.
The final entries grow more erratic, the handwriting sharp and jagged.
July 11
He said if I keep causing problems, he’ll make sure I’m taken care of. Forever. I think he means it. I have to find a way out. For me. For Ellie. She’s still young enough. She can forget.
July 14
He threatened me today. Said he'd tell everyone I was unstable. That he'd show them the records. What records? I never consented
to anything. If you find this, Ellie—don’t trust him. Don’t trust any of them.
The journal ends there. No final farewell. No explanation. Just a warning.
I clutch the journal against my chest, the dusty air rasping in my lungs. My mother wasn’t crazy. She was trapped. Controlled.
Destroyed. By the very people who claimed to love her.
Just like me.
I jam the journal into my tote bag and replace the floorboard, leaving no sign I was here. I have to get out before my father
comes back. Before he realizes what I've found. A thousand thoughts charge through my mind, but one screams louder than all
the rest:
If they did it to her, they’ll do it to me.
Unless I end this first. My heart hammers against my ribs. I need to leave. Now. Every instinct screams it. But something
stops me.
On a low shelf near the closet’s back wall, half-buried under yellowing papers and dusty storage boxes, a small wooden jewelry
box with a pearl inlay catches my eye. A strip of metal with tarnished gold lettering curls off the lid, but I can still make
out the initials: V.T.
Valeria Thomas.
My mother's jewelry box.
Hands trembling, I pull it free and flip open the clasp. A soft, mechanical whirring fills the air. And then—music.
A crackling, broken version of Clair de Lune lilts into the empty room, so distorted it sounds like it’s playing underwater.
A tiny, cracked prima ballerina pops upright, spinning stiffly on one worn slipper, her porcelain face frozen in a blissful,
eerie smile.
The sound hits me like a punch. Suddenly, I'm not in the servants’ quarters anymore.
I'm five years old, peeking out from behind the heavy velvet drapes in the penthouse living room. The sunlight catches the
gleaming marble, casting long shadows across the floor. The music box is open on the side table, playing the same broken melody.
I remember clutching my stuffed rabbit, thumb tucked between my teeth, heart pounding against my tiny chest.
And then—chaos.
Men in white coats storm into the room, moving too fast, too loud. I hear my mother scream—a raw, panicked sound that makes
the hairs on my arms stand up even now.
They grab her roughly by the arms. She thrashes, kicking over a vase, sending shards skittering across the floor. I remember
the sickening crash. The way she twisted and fought like a trapped animal.
And my father standing by the fireplace, stone-faced. Watching.
He doesn’t move. He doesn’t stop them.
He lets it happen.
My mother turns her head sharply, wild-eyed, hair loose around her face. She finds me—my small, hidden form behind the curtains—and
our eyes lock.
“Don’t believe him!” she screams.
The words are so sharp, so loud, they cut through everything—the men’s shouts, the shattered glass, the music box's haunting,
broken song.
And then she’s gone, dragged out the front door. The lock clicks shut behind them.
I stand frozen, the music box playing its last, desperate notes. My father kneels beside me, calm and steady, brushing my
hair back from my face. His voice smooth and warm.
“She’s sick, Ellie,” he whispers. “She had to go away. But don’t worry. Daddy’s here. I’ll take care of you.”
He pulls me into a hug, wrapping me up in his arms. I remember his suit smelled like cold air and cologne. I remember wanting
to pull away but being too afraid. Because even at five years old, I knew my mother was right: he was lying.
The music box sputters to silence in the present. I sit there on the dusty floor, shaking, the velvet box still open in my
lap, the little ballerina slowly winding down, her dance jerky and incomplete. My skin is clammy. My stomach churns. I wasn’t
wrong about my mother. I wasn’t wrong about any of it.
He made me forget. He trained me to forget. Rewrote my memories with bedtime stories and empty promises and polished smiles. He buried my mother alive
in some psychiatric facility.
And then he buried the truth.
I slam the jewelry box shut. It feels violent. I need to get out of here before he comes back. I push to my feet, dizzy, my
legs cramping from sitting so long. I tuck the box into my bag next to the journal, zip the bag shut, and sling it over my
shoulder.
As I move toward the door, I catch my reflection in the cracked mirror hanging next to the door.
I barely recognize myself. My hair is wild, face flushed, eyes wide with something between terror and rage. I vow then to stop doubting myself. No more listening to their lies.
Jack. Aubrey. My father. All of them.
They think they’re playing me. They think I’m still the girl they gaslit into silence. But they forgot something. They forgot
whose blood runs in my veins.
My mother’s.
Like mother, like daughter. Kat’s words ring in my mind.
And she fought tooth and nail.
Now it’s my turn.