Chapter 21
Twenty-One
AURELIA
It was supposed to be just a normal day. Dasha came to visit with Masha. They still aren’t together, but I can see how much love sits between them.
Margaret is making tea, and Victor has just brought in fresh flowers from the garden. We all had a long conversation last night. Now that everything has finally been settled, Victor will go to Spain, buy a house, visit his mother and brother. Margaret will stay here, exactly where she wants to be.
And it should all feel right. It should all be the way it’s meant to be.
But then the doorbell rings.
Nathaniel steps out of the staff kitchen and walks away to open the front door. I follow after him.
When the door swings open, police officers are standing on the front step.
“Nathaniel Rosewood?” One of them asks.
“Yes,” he says, then tilts his head slightly toward me.
“You are under arrest on suspicion of the murders of Helena and Lilibeth Rosewood,” the officer says before turning him around and locking cuffs around his wrists.
My legs move. I rush to the door, shouting after him, but they take him anyway. Dasha and Victor come running at the sound of the commotion, and we are all left standing there in shock.
One of the officers stays behind and steps inside. Judging by the look on Dasha’s face, he’s the friend she told me about.
“What happened?” I ask.
He turns to the door, closes it quietly, then faces us.
“After Dasha gave me the bones suspected to be Daniel Grant’s, I had them examined. They found traces of poisoning, and it was confirmed they belonged to Lilibeth Rosewood.”
It’s all my fault. This is all my fault.
“The detectives found more evidence that led back to him. For now, he is only a suspect.”
“He wasn’t even in the house,” Victor shouts from the back.
“Unfortunately, there is no one who can confirm that,” he says.
“I can,” I say quickly. “I have Lilibeth’s diary in the bedroom. She wrote everything down. They had a good relationship.”
“Okay,” he says. “I’ll take it as evidence.”
I rush upstairs to the right wing, searching for the diary I left on the nightstand. It’s still there, exactly where I left it. Nathaniel didn’t even bother to read the pages.
I grab it and hurry back downstairs, placing it into the officer’s hands.
“We’ll get back to you,” he says, taking it from me before walking out the door.
I look at Dasha, my hands shaking. “It’s all my fault.”
If I had trusted him, if I had waited just a little longer, we wouldn’t be here. But I didn’t think. I didn’t think at all.
Dasha comes to me. Victor and Margaret follow, and together we move to the lobby near the fireplace. Victor kneels by the heat and feeds dry wood into the fire. Flames catch slowly, licking through the logs, filling the room with a low crackle.
I sink into the chair while the others stay quiet.
The house is finally full of life again, yet somehow, sitting here with all of them, it still feels like something inside us has already died.
Hours have passed, and Margaret is the first to leave. She wants to come back early in the morning, in case Mr. Rosewood returns. Masha leaves second. She has to go back to New York, and she says goodbye to Dasha while Victor and I remain seated on the sofa near the fireplace.
“Miss Vale,” he asks, “how much do you remember?”
I tilt my head toward him, trying to fit the pieces together, but nothing comes.
“Just bits and pieces,” I say.
His hand scratches at his beard. “Do you remember visiting that night, when Lilibeth and Helena died?”
I swallow and shake my head. “No,” I say. “Why would I even be here?”
He shrugs. “Maybe because she called you for tea. The two of you got close in the two years before. Lilibeth liked to keep her friends close, but...” He lifts his brows.
“She recognized you from one of the pictures. You looked like a girl who died a long time ago,” he says. “She told me she remembered seeing that girl often with her aunt in London.”
I shake my head. “I don’t remember.”
“Maybe I’m mistaken,” he says.
As Dasha walks closer, he presses two fingers to his lips, then mimics throwing away a key.
“I wonder how long it’ll be before we hear something,” she says.
I ignore her words and stare at the fireplace, my finger caught between my teeth, trying to remember while the fire ticks and crackles away.
“Aurelia,” she calls. “Are you okay?”
When I turn to face her, I catch sight of the Lady of the house peeking from the hallway.
My breath turns shallow.
I press my hands over my eyes, trying to hide that I saw her. But she saw me too.
Am I like Lilibeth? Did she come for me now?
Victor and Dasha both turn, trying to see what scared me, but when they find nothing there, concern settles over their faces instead.
“Let me take you to bed,” Dasha says, but I shake my head.
She lifts her hands in surrender, then drapes a blanket over me.
“I’ll make some coffee,” Victor says, leaving us alone.
The second he is gone, she leans closer.
“I’m worried,” she says. “What is really going on?”
“I don’t know,” I say.
Before, I kept myself closed because I was afraid I’d say the wrong thing and people wouldn’t like me. But now I keep myself closed because I’m afraid they will.
I was always different. The quiet one. The girl with her nose buried in notes, the one people thought they understood just because I stayed still long enough for them to invent a version of me.
But if they knew how strange I really was, I would have no one beside me at all.
With Nathaniel, it’s different.
He is different.
And while I want to keep everything locked inside me, I have a feeling he is the only one I can trust.
I hear the front door open, and we both turn toward the entrance, searching for who it might be.
It’s him.
He is holding his blazer in one hand as he leans against the doorframe.
“Prodigy son returns,” he chuckles, stepping closer to us.
I jump to my feet and move toward him, trying to find the right words, but nothing comes. He just presses his lips to mine and breathes out, “I missed you.”
Dasha reads the room and leaves, giving us a moment alone.
“I’m so, so sorry.” I kiss his cheek. “It’s my fault. I told Dasha to check the bones and I...”
But instead of answering, he kisses me again.
“It’s been a long day, Kitten,” he breathes out. “Thanks to you, they got the diary, and they found out Viviane didn’t fall. She was pushed by Lilibeth. They also found out Helena discovered the diary two months before she died and read everything that happened.”
He takes my hand. “Now it all points to Lilibeth drowning her in a bathtub, then killing herself after. There are some inconsistencies, but they’ll investigate that further.”
I blink at him, scanning his face, and swallow my words. “I have to tell you something.”
He rubs his eyes as he sits beside me.
“I was the one who freed Daniel.” I say.
He closes his eyes and lets out a breath, his knuckles turning white as his fingers clench into fists.
I place my hand over his. “But not because I wanted him out there. It’s because I wanted him to pay for all the years he kept me trapped.”
His eyes open and lock on mine. “What did you do?”
“I locked him in a trunk and pushed the car off the cliff.” I swallow. “At the same spot where he left me six years ago.”
“He’s gone now,” I say, resting my palm against his cheek. “He can’t hurt any of us anymore.”
He leans his head against my chest and closes his eyes. “I hate what he took from you.” He lifts his gaze to me, looking up into my eyes. “You used to be so happy and innocent, and now that part of you is gone.”
“We change.” I look at him and blink. “And believe me, this version of me is better than the one I was before.”
“Even if you had thousands of versions of yourself, I would still fall in love with every single one, Kitten,” he says, standing and holding his hands out to me.
I place my palm in his, and he guides me upstairs.
It’s true. Inside every single one of us, there is someone else. A version waiting to be awakened. And it only takes the right person to bring the right version of you to life.