Chapter 10 The Letter and the Lie

The letter had weight. Not from the paper – thick, cream, unlined – but from the silence it carried. A silence that stretched across decades and waited for my hands to tremble.

They didn't. Not yet.

I sat in the bedroom at the Lily House, the green dress still folded on the bed beside me like an offering from a memory I no longer trusted. Frank waited downstairs. I hadn't told him about the envelope yet. I wasn't ready to share what hadn't even been mine for more than a minute.

The wax broke with a soft snap.

Inside were two pages. Handwritten in my mother's looping cursive. Steady. Final.

If you're reading this, then I am gone. But not forgotten and not done. You were never meant to live the life I lived. That was the plan. That was the lie. But fate doesn't burn clean.

Bishop will come for you not because of what you know, but because of what you carry. You are not the only child of mine, Vivian. You are the only one I trusted with the end of the story.

There is a name I buried, the same way I buried my past. If you find it, you'll know what to do. But you must decide what kind of woman you are before you speak it aloud. Names are weapons. You've always known that.

Forgive me. Or don't. But listen closely to the silence. It will tell you everything.

And remember... Bishop never looks twice at something he thinks he already owns. Let him think he owns you.

There was no signature.

No return address.

Just the weight of a confession written in ink that might as well have been blood.

I folded the letter slowly and carefully and held it against my chest.

Then I walked downstairs.

And told Frank everything.

Frank stood in the parlour, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled, his tie loose like he'd been debating something with the walls.

He turned when I entered. One look at my face and his jaw tightened.

"You opened it," he said.

I nodded and handed him the second page, the one with the least dangerous words. He read it slowly, his brow furrowing with each line, as if he already knew what it might say but still hoped to be wrong.

"She didn't trust many people," I said.

"She shouldn't have."

"I want to know what you're not telling me."

He looked up. "You think I'm still lying?"

"I think you've been edited," I said. "Just like everything else in this story."

A beat of silence stretched between us, tight and electric.

Then Frank said, "I worked for Bishop."

There it was.

"I was nineteen. My father owed debts; my mother was gone. Bishop paid well and asked for silence. I gave him both."

"And then?"

"Then Celeste disappeared. No goodbye. No body. Just... gone. I started pulling threads. Didn't like what I found."

"You left," I said.

"I burnt every trace I could," he said. "But people like Bishop don't care about fires. They care about smoke."

I stepped closer.

"You knew who I was before I ever sang a note."

"Yes."

"And you still let this happen?"

His eyes flicked over me like they were trying to memorise a warning.

"No," he said. "I didn't let anything. I chose it."

The words hovered in the room between us. Too much truth. Too late for denial.

We stood there, inches apart. Tired. Wounded. Pulled by something old and unfinished.

He looked down at my mouth.

I didn't move.

And in that breath between honesty and disaster, the house answered with the sound of shattering glass.

The sound came from the back of the house – sharp, clean, a single pane of glass giving way to a silent hand.

Frank moved before I could speak, crossing the room with that quiet urgency I'd only seen once before, back when he was pretending not to follow me.

"Stay here," he said.

"You know I won't."

His eyes flicked toward the door, then back to me. "Then stay close."

He moved like a man trained to see through walls.

I followed two steps behind, heart racing louder than our footfalls on the hallway runner.

The kitchen was empty.

But the back door's small glass pane above the knob was shattered. A single drop of blood on the floor beneath it. Fresh. Still warm.

"Not a burglary," Frank said. "Too clean."

"Then what?"

He crouched near the entry, checking the broken edges. "They knew the layout. Knew this was the only room with a door you could reach from the street without being seen."

"But they didn't come for the letter," I said. "They didn't search. No drawers opened. Nothing disturbed."

Frank straightened slowly.

"They came to see if I was here."

I blinked. "You?"

He nodded once. "They're not after what you have. Not anymore. They're after what I know."

I looked toward the window. The night beyond was still. Too still.

"And what do you know, Frank?"

He met my eyes and, for the first time, looked genuinely afraid.

"Enough to make them kill carefully."

Frank checked the doors, windows, and locks that had never really mattered.

I drifted back toward the front hall, ears still straining for any sound that didn't belong to us.

The hallway mirror caught me as I passed, a warped silhouette in half-light. Something tugged at my attention just below the frame, just above the baseboard.

A single word, scrawled in pencil.

Halvorsen.

Rushed. Sharp. But deliberate.

I dropped to one knee, stared at it, heart hitching like it had hit something submerged.

It wasn't vandalism.

It was a signature.

Someone had come into this house not to take but to tell.

"Frank", I called.

He was beside me in seconds.

When he saw the name, he didn't speak.

"He's marked," I said.

Frank's voice was low. "Not just marked. Scheduled."

"You mean they're going to..."

"Yes," he said. "Soon."

I looked at the word again. Five letters, written twice now, once in my mind and once on the wall.

Bishop wasn't just hunting.

He was warning.

Frank stepped back. "We have to get to him."

I shook my head. "We won't make it in time."

His hands curled into fists. Not rage...strategy.

"We try anyway."

Because the next name they'd write wouldn't be his.

It would be mine.

Frank grabbed his coat. "We go now. Halvorsen's not the kind of man who runs, but he's smart enough to hide. We might have a shot."

I didn't move.

I stood in the upstairs bedroom, staring at the green silk dress on the bed. My mother's dress. The one she'd left behind like a memory folded into fabric.

Frank appeared in the doorway, watching me.

"You can't stay here," he said.

"I'm not."

I reached for the box of matches on the vanity. Struck one. The flare of it lit the room like a stage.

"Vivian..."

I held the flame under the hem of the dress.

It caught fast.

Silk curled and blackened. The fire raced upward like it was starving. I didn't flinch.

"This dress", I said quietly, "was the lie she wore to keep her truth hidden."

Frank stepped forward, cautious, like I might ignite next.

"She loved you," he said.

"She left me a legacy," I corrected. "One I didn't ask for. But I'm not going to wear it like a secret."

The fire bloomed across the bedspread. He moved to grab a pitcher of water, but I stopped him.

"Let it burn."

We stood there together, watching the past disappear in heat and smoke.

When the flames settled to embers, I turned to him.

"If Bishop wants the end of her story", I said, "he can have it."

I stepped over the scorched floorboards.

"But the next chapter belongs to me."