Page 59 of Hidden

That was the lie I had been swallowing for so long it had started to taste like truth.

But now?

Now I couldn’t stop hearing Rachel’s voice in my head, soft and certain and quietly devastating.

That doesn’t sound like a happy woman. That sounds like a trapped woman.

And I hated that it had taken me this long to let the possibility in.

I reached the wall beneath her balcony and paused for only a second before hauling myself up, my palms catching rough brick as muscle memory and frustration did the rest. It wasn’t the first time I had climbed up there, but it was the first time I had done it with this much intent, this much fury simmering low beneath my skin. By the time I pulled myself over the railing and landed softly on the narrow balcony, my heart was beating hard enough to make my pulse feel thick in my throat.

And there she was.

She had heard me before I even fully straightened, her body already still in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and fixed on me like I had materialised from the dark rather than climbed out of it.

For a second, neither of us moved.

She looked beautiful in that cruel, painful way she always had. Barefoot. Pale. Wrapped in one of those soft-lookingnightshirts that did nothing to hide how fragile she seemed beneath it.

Her hair fell loose around her shoulders, and even from where I stood, I could see the tension in the line of her body, the way she held herself too carefully, too stiffly, like pain had become something she wore so often she no longer noticed the weight of it.

And Christ, that alone nearly did me in.

Because all I could think was that she didn’t look like a woman who was happy.

She looked like a woman surviving.

My hand lifted before I consciously thought to move, my palm flattening against the glass between us, and her gaze dropped to it instantly before flicking back to my face.

“Open the door,” I said, the words rougher than I had intended, quieter too, because even now some part of me knew better than to make noise out here.

Her expression shifted immediately.

Not cold or angry. Worse… She looked afraid. And that made my stomach drop. I didn’t want her to fear me. Or to have anything to fear.

She shook her head once, a slow, small movement that would have been easy to miss for someone who wasn’t as obsessed as I was. But I saw it, and I felt something burst inside me, flaring beneath my ribs, igniting an anger that was impossible to ignore.

“Gabriella,” I said again, trying to keep my voice level, trying not to let the anger or the fear or the days of spiralling doubt bleed too heavily into the sound of her name, but failing anyway. “Open the fucking door.”

Her lips parted like she meant to say something, but no sound came out. Instead, she just shook her head again, more urgently this time, her eyes darting past me for the briefest second before snapping back.

That look did something to me, because I knew what that look meant now. I was seeing past my own hurt, past the indifference she was pretending to adopt, and I saw it, really saw it.

It was fear.

And suddenly I was no longer looking at a woman choosing distance. I was looking at someone trying to stop me from doing something stupid.

My hand dropped from the glass to the handle before I had fully thought it through, my fingers wrapping around the metal knob and twisting hard.

Nothing.

The door didn’t budge.

I tried again, harder this time, a surge of disbelief and something far darker rising up through me so quickly it made my vision blur for half a second.

Locked.

The fucking thing was locked.