Chapter 24 #2
“Alright. Where exactly do you think this next clue is?” he—reluctantly—stepped away from me, giving me space to look around.
“Beneath the gaze…” I murmured, piecing the clue together aloud. “In the fireplace.”
Felix’s eyes locked onto mine. He took a step closer, his body pressing against mine. “Good,” he said, his voice low and serious, leaving no room for argument. “Then let’s see what it’s hiding.”
My pulse quickened, both from the thrill of discovery and the possessive weight of him looming so close. Every instinct screamed to kiss him, but I couldn’t ignore the pull of the hidden secret right in front of me.
“Ok,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I really was.
I crouched down and crawled into the fireplace, brushing ash off my palms as I moved.
My heart pounded as I scanned the bricks, the dark corners, the soot-stained crevices, completely unsure of what I was even supposed to be searching for.
My fingers hesitated over the cold stone, my breath shallow.
What if I was wrong? What if there was nothing here at all?
The silence stretched, heavy and unrelenting.
Felix didn’t move, didn’t say a word. He just stood there with his arms crossed, watching.
I could feel his gaze burning into me, a pressure that made my skin prickle and my movements clumsy.
He was letting me squirm, letting me stumble through the dark with nothing but my own nerves to guide me.
My hands skimmed along the rough stone, soot grinding into my fingertips, when I paused. One of the bricks was smoother than the others, the edges too clean, too deliberate. My pulse leapt.
I pressed against it, and it shifted under my palm with a faint click. My breath caught. It wasn’t just a brick—it was a mechanism, a hidden panel.
But when I tried to pull it free, it wouldn’t budge. My stomach dipped. Etched faintly into the surface were tiny grooves—numbers. A combination lock.
Of course. Of course it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Did you find something?” Felix asked at last, his voice low and unhurried, like he already knew the answer.
“Yeah,” I responded, trying to hide the defeat in my voice. “I’m just… trying to get it open.”
My fingers trembled over the surface. Numbers. That was what I needed.
The images flashed in my mind like sparks in the dark: the dates carved into the wall, the ones etched faintly on the desk. I’d memorized them without meaning to, turning them over and over in my head like puzzle pieces.
I entered the first set of numbers into the hidden mechanism—nothing. My chest tightened. I tried the second, swallowing hard, each attempt louder in my own head than it really was.
Click.
The sound reverberated through the hollow of the fireplace, so small and yet so enormous it seemed to shake the air around me. My heart stuttered, then raced, the thrill of it coursing through every vein. I’d done it. The code had worked.
I pressed my palm flat against the loosened brick, a tremor of disbelief running through me. After all the obsessive nights, the scratching dates, the endless wondering—it hadn’t been madness. It had led somewhere.
My hand trembled as I pried the brick loose and set it aside. When I pulled it free, I found a stack of papers, bound tightly together with small metal hooks, as if someone had gone to great lengths to keep them orderly—and hidden.
It was too dark to make out the words in the cramped space of the fireplace. I wriggled back out, coughing against the dust as my knees scraped the hearth. Ash streaked my hands, my shirt, even my hair, scattering onto the polished wooden floor like I’d just rolled in it.
“You’re covered in soot,” Felix said, his voice threaded with amusement. His eyes lingered on me like he was enjoying the sight a little too much.
“Don’t care,” I said, holding up the documents. “Look!”
Felix’s smirk faded the moment he saw what I was holding. His eyes darkened as he reached for the papers.
We crouched side by side on the floor, his presence tight and unyielding next to me, and he began flipping through the stack with deliberate precision.
Each sheet he examined made his jaw tighten slightly, the amusement completely gone.
The weight of his focus pressed against me, and even in the thrill of discovery, I felt the danger he carried radiating through every line of his body.
It was a stack of ledgers, every page filled with numbers, calculations, and annotations that made my head spin. I could barely make sense of a single line, let alone the full scope of what I was looking at.
Felix’s eyes, however, moved over the pages with an ease and precision that made my own confusion sting. He muttered under his breath occasionally, his brows knitting as he traced lines, connected dots, and analyzed figures in a way I couldn’t even begin to follow.
I leaned closer, trying to catch a word, a hint, anything that could anchor me in the overwhelming tangle of numbers. But mostly, I just watched him work, the heat of his focus pressing in alongside the thrill of discovery.
“What does it mean?” I hesitantly asked.
Felix didn’t answer immediately. He flipped through the pages again, eyes dark and unreadable, lips pressed into a thin line. Finally, he looked up at me, the weight of his gaze making my chest tighten.
“It’s just a guess right now,” he said, his lips set in a firm line. “But it seems like a lot of money went missing in our family. My grandmother was keeping track of it. But I don’t know why she wouldn’t just tell someone.”
“Why wouldn’t she tell anyone?” I whispered, more to myself than to him.
Felix’s gaze darkened, unreadable and intense. “Sometimes people keep secrets to protect themselves, or to protect others. Doesn’t make it any less dangerous.”
The mystery wasn’t over. Not by a long shot. But for now, we were headed forward.