Chapter 3

The Letter:

She blamed the guest bed for the bad night’s sleep. That was a lie and she knew it was a lie, but it was easier than admitting the real reason was eleven words sitting on her phone.

“Your father didn’t die the way they told you. Ask the Alpha what he knew, and when he knew it.”

She had it memorized by morning. No name attached, no number to call back just the message, sitting there in her inbox like a rock somebody had thrown through a window and then walked off without waiting to see the damage.

She made coffee because her hands needed something to do that didn’t involve staring at her phone. Then she went back into the study and finally opened the filing cabinet she’d been avoiding since she got here.

She’d known, without quite letting herself know it, that whatever her father hadn’t said to her face was probably sitting in that drawer.

The top drawer was nothing. Tax stuff, warranty cards for a dishwasher that had been replaced years ago, a folder of her old report cards that got her in the throat more than she expected. She set that one aside, careful, like it might bruise if she wasn’t gentle with it.

The second drawer was where it went sideways.

She almost missed the false bottom.Would have missed it, actually, if the drawer hadn’t sat about half an inch shallower than it should’ve the kind of detail you’d write off as nothing, except her father never did anything by accident. He mended fences before the storm, not after. If a drawer looked wrong, it was wrong on purpose.

She pried it up with a letter opener. Found an envelope underneath, yellowed a little at the edges, her name across the front in his slanted handwriting.

 Elena.

Just that. Not “my daughter”. Not “love”. Just her name, like he’d written it fast, or like he was scared that if he let himself write anything softer he wouldn’t be able to finish the rest.

Her hands weren’t steady opening it.

 Elena,

 If you’re reading this it means I didn’t get the chance to tell you myself, and I’m sorry for that. I should have told you years ago. I told myself I was protecting you by staying quiet. I know now that was a coward’s excuse for wearing love’s clothes.

What happened to you five years ago wasn’t what it looked like. You weren’t rejected because Damon stopped wanting you. You were rejected because someone made very sure he believed you’d betrayed him and I didn’t move fast enough to stop it, because by the time I understood what was happening, it was already done.

 I’ve spent years trying to find proof of who did this and why. I have pieces. Not the whole picture. I never got the whole picture, and that sits on me more than almost anything else in my life. But I know enough to tell you: don’t trust everyone currently close to the Alpha. One of them had a hand in what was done to you. And I believe, though I can’t prove it yet, that this goes back further than you, or Damon, or even me. Something buried in this pack a long time ago that certain people would do almost anything to keep buried still.

  I kept what I found. It’s somewhere safe. You’ll know where to look, if you think the way I taught you to think. 

  I’m sorry for every year I let you believe you weren’t worth fighting for. You were. You are. I should have said that the day it happened instead of staying quiet and letting you carry the shame of it alone for five years.

Not everything is as it seems, Elena. Be careful. And whatever you decide to do with this don’t let anyone talk you into believing you imagined it.

 I love you. I always have.

 Dad

She read it twice before it actually landed, and a third time because some stubborn part of her wouldn’t take it the first two.

 Someone made very sure he believed you’d betrayed him.

For five years she’d carried a version of this that made sense, even if it hurt Damon had looked at her and decided she wasn’t enough, decided in some cold Alpha calculation that she was a liability, and cut her loose the way you cut loose anything that stopped serving the pack. It had been brutal, but at least it was simple. She’d built five years on top of that simplicity. Every wall. Every time she told herself she was better off. And now her father’s handwriting was telling her the foundation had been rotten the whole time.

She sat there with the letter in her lap long enough that the coffee went cold, long enough that the light through the window went from gray to something warmer.

Somebody had done this to her. On purpose. Not fate. Not some failure in herself she’d never quite managed to name even on the worst nights alone in her city apartment. A person had decided this, and built a lie sturdy enough to survive five years without anyone pulling the thread that would’ve unraveled it.

The anger came first, hot, fast, and she let herself sit in it a minute, fists curled in her lap, shaking a little because it beat the thing underneath it, which was grief. Grief for the past five years. Grief for a father who’d known and hadn’t told her, though even furious, she understood he probably had his reasons, was probably trying to protect her from something worse than not knowing.

And under the grief, quieter, more dangerous: if it wasn’t true if Damon hadn’t just decided she wasn’t worth keeping then what actually happened to him that day, to make him do it anyway?

She didn’t want to ask herself that. She made herself ask it anyway, because not asking felt like exactly the kind of cowardice her father had just apologized to her for.

She read the letter again, slower this time, hunting for anything she’d missed. Found it at the bottom, under his signature, in handwriting a little less steady than the rest added later, maybe, in whatever hours he’d had left.

Not everything is as it seems.

He’d already said that once, in the body of the letter. He said it again anyway, as he needed her to be sure she hadn’t skipped past it, like it wasn’t just a warning about the past anymore but an instruction for whatever came next.

She thought about the phone message again. Ask the Alpha what he knew, and when he knew it. Two messages in two days, both pointing the same direction, neither one willing to put a name on it. Either somebody wanted her to find the truth badly enough to risk handing it to her in pieces or somebody wanted her chasing shadows instead of looking too closely at whoever was standing close enough to be handing her the pieces herself.

She didn’t know which yet. She made herself sit with not knowing instead of rushing past it, because her father had just spent a whole letter warning her against exactly that kind of trust.

She went back through the rest of the drawer, slower now, checking every folder for a false bottom of its own, every book on the shelf for something tucked between the pages. Nothing else turned up that night. Whatever evidence he’d kept somewhere safe, he’d written, infuriatingly vague, as he trusted her to already know what that meant; it wasn’t sitting in this drawer waiting to make things easy for her.

 You’ll know where to look, if you think the way I taught you to think.

She almost laughed at that. It sounded exactly like him a man who never once gave her a straight answer when a puzzle would do instead, who used to hide her birthday presents around the house with little clues instead of just telling her where they were, because he said a thing you had to work for stuck with you longer than a thing somebody just handed you.

She wasn’t in the mood to appreciate the lesson tonight. She filed it away anyway, folded the letter back along its original creases, and sat there a long while as the empty house ticked around her.

At some point she got up and checked the window, just to make sure no one was standing in the yard. There wasn’t. Old habit, or maybe a new one, born about ten minutes ago and already fully installed.

Somebody had done this to her on purpose. She understood that now, with a kind of cold clarity that settled into her chest and didn’t leave.

She was going to find out who. And she was going to make them answer for it.