I swallow back bile. Twelve years of therapy, of building new versions of myself—the fearless dancer, the woman who controls her own pleasure with the twins—none of it prepared me for seeing his name on my phone.
My hands won’t stop shaking. I force myself to breathe, counting each inhale and exhale. One, two, three...
No one knows. Not social services—I never filed a report. I’d packed those memories away so carefully, building walls within my mind. The system taught me to compartmentalize early—this box for the good days, this box for the beatings, this box for what Richard did—and then, two years after that, William.
Never to be opened again.
Yet here it is, blown wide open by a message from a stranger.
The violation feels fresh, as if Richard’s hands are on me all over again. Someone has been watching me. Someone knows my darkest secret. Someone has stripped away the protection of silence I’ve held onto for a decade.
I curl tighter into the corner of the couch, making myself small the way I used to when I heard his footsteps on the basement stairs. The memory is so vivid that I can smell the damp concrete and feel the cold floor against my skin.
The front door clicks open, and I jolt upright, hastily wiping tears from my face. Voices drift in—Ace’s measured tonecountered by Cyrus’s animated responses. I fumble with my phone, fingers trembling as I try to delete the message.
“—next time we should just—” Cyrus stops mid-sentence as they enter the living room. His easy smile vanishes. “Keira?”
I try to school my expression, but know it’s too late. He’s seen my red-rimmed eyes, the tremor in my hands, the way I’m curled protectively around myself.
“What happened?” He crosses the room in three long strides.
“Nothing.” My voice breaks on the word.
Ace appears behind him, his normally impassive face tightening as he studies me. “That’s not nothing.”
I swipe frantically at my screen, desperate to erase the message before they see it. But Cyrus is faster, plucking the phone from my hands with the same fluid grace he uses to take lives.
“Don’t—”
Too late. His eyes narrow as he reads the message, then darken with a dangerous intensity I’ve never seen before.
“Who the fuck is Richard Henderson?” The deceptive softness in his voice makes my skin prickle. “And what did he do to you?”
Ace moves to read over his brother’s shoulder. His expression doesn’t change, but the temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees.
“Keira.” Ace’s voice leaves no room for evasion. “Answer the question.”
My throat closes. I stare at the floor, at my hands, at anything but their faces. The silence stretches between us like a live wire.
“Keira,” Cyrus repeats, kneeling in front of me. His fingers grip my chin, forcing my gaze to his. “Who is he?”
I try to speak, but nothing comes out. The memories press against the back of my eyes—Richard’s basement, the camera’sred light, his hands. My body remembers what my mind has tried to forget.
“I—” My voice fails me completely.
“We need to know who this is.” Ace’s voice is deceptively calm. He crouches beside his brother. “If he hurt you, we’ll kill him. It’s that simple.”
The matter-of-fact way he says it, like offering to pick up groceries, sends a shiver through me.
Cyrus squeezes my knee. “I’m going to make you some tea. We’re not going anywhere, and neither are you. Not until we understand what this is.”
As he disappears into the kitchen, I draw my knees up to my chest. The message on my phone keeps flashing behind my eyelids.
I know what happened at the Henderson house. I know what Richard did to you.
The basement walls close in around me. The camera’s red light blinks in the corner. His footsteps on the stairs.
A sob tears from my throat—raw and ugly—the sound of something breaking that was never properly fixed. Years of careful compartmentalization shatter in an instant. I press my face into my knees, shoulders shaking uncontrollably.
