2025-08-26 16:34:37The envelope was thick, cream-colored, and unmarked—no stamp, no return address. It sat on her doormat like a warning, as if it had no business in a life like hers.
Lana bent down to pick it up, brushing her fingers over the expensive linen paper. Heavy. Sealed in wax. Her name was handwritten in dark ink across the front in precise, sloping calligraphy. It looked like it belonged to a royal court or an ancient will, not a walk-up apartment in a forgotten corner of Brooklyn, where the heat barely worked and the air smelled like damp plaster. Her instincts whispered: Don’t open it. Her curiosity overruled them. Inside, the message was short and strange: Miss Lana Rey, You are cordially requested to attend a private engagement interview at the Thompson Estate on Friday, the 12th of September, at 7:00 p.m. Transportation will be provided. Further details to follow. This summons is binding by agreement of guardianship. Kindly dress accordingly. – The Thompson Family. Lana blinked. Read it again. Binding by guardianship? She aged out of the foster system at eighteen, and there hadn’t been a single person standing at the edge of that cliff with her. There were no guardians. No distant relatives. No inheritance. She’d scraped her way through a city that didn’t notice her. This had to be a scam. But it didn’t feel like one. No demands for money. No web addresses. No phone numbers. Just an invitation… and a name. Thompson. As in Thompson Enterprises—the billion-dollar empire, the legacy estate, the name whispered through boardrooms and scandals alike. The Thompsons didn’t send letters. They sent lawyers. And even then, they didn’t do it without reason. She turned the paper over twice more, inspected the seal, even held it up to the window light. Nothing changed. The address was real. The name was spelled right. The signature… confident. She folded the letter slowly and set it on the kitchen table. Her stomach twisted. By nightfall, she had convinced herself not to go. By morning, she wasn’t so sure. ⸻ “You sure you don’t want me to call someone?” Maria squinted over the bookstore counter as Lana rang up a customer’s paperback. “This sounds like one of those rich-people rituals. Or cults.” Lana forced a dry laugh. “If they ask for a blood sacrifice, I’ll run.” Maria didn’t laugh. She hadn’t told her the full truth—about the seal, the handwriting, the feeling she got in her bones when she first touched the paper. Lana couldn’t explain it. It was like the letter had been meant for her. Not accidentally mailed, not randomly chosen. Meant. “Just… share your location,” Maria muttered, pulling out her phone. “Or leave a shoe behind like Cinderella, I don’t know. Something traceable.” “Thanks,” Lana said. “I’ll leave behind my left earring and a trail of bookstore receipts.” It was easier to joke than to admit how much she’d already packed. She left early, heart thudding like a drumbeat in her chest. Outside, the air smelled like warm rain and engine fumes. Her stomach clenched when a black sedan pulled up to the curb precisely at six-thirty. A man in a gray uniform stepped out, expression unreadable. “Miss Rey?” She nodded. The interior of the car was too quiet. The windows were tinted, and no music played. The driver didn’t speak, and Lana didn’t ask questions. She just sat still, watching the city fall away in the rearview mirror. As they drove north, the streetlamps faded. Rows of buildings gave way to forest-lined roads and stretches of nothing. Occasionally, a deer blinked into view before vanishing into the trees again. Her thoughts were a blur: What am I doing? Is this real? What if I never come back? She was still asking herself those questions when the car turned onto a winding, cobblestone driveway. Massive wrought-iron gates opened slowly, as if they hadn’t been used in years. Beyond them stood a house—or more accurately, a mansion—so imposing it looked like it belonged in a different century. Gothic arches. Towering stone columns. Ivy climbing up the walls like veins on ancient skin. Turrets pierced the skyline, and the windows glowed with low amber light. The sedan rolled to a stop. The driver stepped out and opened the door for her. “Miss Rey. The household is expecting you.” Lana swallowed. She stepped out onto the gravel, her breath caught between her ribs. A butler—yes, an actual butler—waited at the front steps. Tall, pale, and perfectly still. “Miss Rey,” he said with a bow. “Welcome to the Thompson Estate.” She tried to respond, but no sound came. The wind brushed against her cheeks, cool and crisp. It smelled like pine trees and something older—stone and wood and secrets. The butler guided her up the steps, past carved doors that looked centuries old. As they opened, warmth flooded over her from the chandeliers above. The foyer was vast, with a ceiling that arched like a cathedral. Oil paintings lined the walls. Some looked recent. Others looked haunted. Lana stopped in her tracks. One painting caught her eye—a portrait of twin children, no older than three. A boy and a girl, both with dark hair and solemn expressions. The girl had Lana’s eyes. She took a step closer, her throat tightening. The butler cleared his throat gently. “Your escort will arrive shortly. Please wait here.” He vanished down a hall, his footsteps swallowed by silence. Lana stood alone in the grand entryway, staring at a stranger’s face that somehow looked like her own. She leaned in, drawn to the delicate brass plaque beneath the painting. Greyson & Alana Thompson – 1999 She stumbled back, heart pounding. Alana. Her full name. But she had never heard it spoken aloud. Never seen it written. Never told anyone. Behind her, a voice broke the silence. Low. Male. Close. “You came,” he said. Lana spun toward the voice. A man stepped from the shadows at the edge of the foyer. Tall, dressed in black. His face was sharply handsome, but his eyes—his eyes looked like the boy in the painting. Older. Hardened. Cold.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
Chapter Eighty — What Remains of Us
By morning, the rain had thinned to a mist that clung to the trees like breath. The world outside the cabin was a blur of gray and green, silent except for the dripping of water through leaves. Grey hadn’t slept. Lana could tell by the way he stood at the window, shoulders rigid, eyes fixed on the fog. The torn page from Seraphine’s letter lay on the table between them — five words that had rearranged everything they thought they knew. You’re looking in the wrong fire. Lana rose quietly, wrapping a shawl around her shoulders. “You’ve been standing there for hours,” she said. Grey didn’t look away. “I keep thinking about the timeline. If Seraphine’s right — if there was another fire — then the one that killed my mother might’ve been staged. Everything since might’ve been built on that lie.” “She’s baiting you,” Lana said softly. “Or warning you. I can’t tell which.” He finally turned, eyes shadowed but alert. “There’s an old Thompson site north of here — a textile property. It b
Chapter Seventy Nine – The Warning
By morning, the storm had drained itself into a gray, exhausted drizzle. Grey was already dressed when Lana opened her eyes. The ledger lay closed on the table, wrapped once more in its oilcloth, as if putting it away could undo what it had revealed. “I need to go back,” he said simply. “There’s someone who might know more. My uncle’s assistant — Harlan. He handled Foundation correspondence.” Lana sat up, clutching the blanket to her chest. “You think he’ll tell you the truth?” “I think he’ll slip up trying not to.” He left before she could argue, leaving only the faint smell of rain on his coat and the soft creak of the door. For hours, the cabin held its silence. Lana made tea that went cold before she ever tasted it. The ledger tempted her like a wound — impossible not to reopen. She turned the pages again, tracing the names. Some entries were marked lost in incident. Others had no endings at all. One entry, written in rushed ink, simply read: Subject relocated – location
Chapter Seventy Eight - The Ledger
The lamp had gone out sometime after midnight, leaving the hut soaked in blue-black quiet. Lana lay awake, eyes open to the faint glow leaking through the window slats. Every creak of timber felt amplified, every breath heavy with thought. Grey hadn’t moved for nearly an hour. But she knew he wasn’t asleep. He never was, not when his mind was circling the past like a wolf around a wound. She turned her head toward him. “Do you ever think,” she murmured, “that some things survive just to haunt us?” Grey’s answer was low, rasped, almost lost to the dark. “Every day.” It wasn’t a confession. It was a truth scraped raw. Silence stretched — long, heavy, pulsing with the echo of the stranger’s warning still alive in her skull: Don’t trust him fully. It shouldn’t have mattered. It shouldn’t have sounded so believable. Finally, Grey pushed himself upright. His outline cut against the faint glow of the dying embers. “There’s something you should see,” he said quietly. He rose, cross
Chapter Seventy-Seven — The Night Watch
The sound of Lana’s breathing steadied before it softened. Grey waited a while longer to be sure.The lamp had gone out completely now, leaving only the dim light of the moon spilling through the window — a thin, colorless wash across the floorboards. He sat where he was, on the low chair near the hearth, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely, listening to the quiet.Outside, the wind had eased. A faint drip of melting snow ticked against the eaves. The kind of silence that came after long violence — too still to be trusted.He should have slept. He knew that. But his body had long forgotten how.He turned his gaze toward her — the narrow rise and fall of her shoulders under the blanket, the faint line of her jaw in the half-dark. Even in sleep, she looked tense, her fingers curled into the fabric as though bracing for something.He exhaled slowly.Don’t trust him fully.The words had hit her hard. He’d seen it in her eyes — the flash of fear, the betrayal she tried to hide. He c
Chapter Seventy-Six – Ash Between Us
The wind had died down by the time Grey shut the door, but the cold clung to the seams of the little hut. The paper bag he’d brought—bread, two tins, and a thermos—sat forgotten on the table between them.Lana hadn’t moved since he came in. The card still lay near her, charred around the edges, the faint trace of smoke curling from it as though reluctant to leave.Grey crouched beside her, studying the floorboards, the shadows, the corners. He didn’t touch her. “Whoever it was,” he said quietly, “they knew how to get this close without leaving a sound.”Lana nodded numbly. Her hands were stiff, her knuckles white against her knees. “He didn’t break in. He just… stood there. Like he knew I’d wake.”Grey’s gaze flicked to her. “He?”She hesitated. “I think so. His voice was low, soft. He said…” Her throat closed. The words still felt too heavy, too strange. Don’t trust him fully.Grey didn’t push. He stood slowly, arms folded, his profile sharp against the flicker of lamplight. “And the
Chapter Seventy-Five: Shadows Don’t Burn
The silence after the storm had its own kind of violence.Grey set the paper bag down on the counter — a simple, ordinary thing, the smell of coffee and bread spilling into the cold air. But nothing about the moment felt ordinary anymore.Lana was still standing by the table, the edges of the burned card singeing her palm. She didn’t look at him when she spoke. “I didn’t see his face,” she said softly. “He was gone before I could—”Grey was already moving toward the window, scanning the treeline beyond the frost-glazed glass. “How long ago?”“Minutes,” she murmured. “Maybe less.”He turned back to her, his expression sharpening into that unreadable calm he wore when danger brushed too close. It wasn’t fear she saw in him — it was calculation.“He left this?” Grey asked, nodding toward the card in her hand.Lana hesitated before holding it out. The words were nearly gone, the ink burned at the edges. Grey’s fingers brushed hers as he took it — a small contact that sent her nerves sting
You may also like
Don't Go To The Woods
Beauty Queen4.6K viewsThe Serial Killer: A headache for the police
Jejewiyyah2.7K viewsThe Organ Games
MK205.9K viewsSHADOW AND LIGHT (CHIAROSCURO)
Prince Firelorn6.1K viewsSurviving the Apocalypse with my son
Emmy_Logz22.5K viewsA family of evil
Stanley1.8K viewsNew Rockville
Mandla1.2K viewsDark Weapon Book One: Time of Bombing
Rachel N1.9K views