Page 50 of Scarred By Sin

July 2026

Friday — 11:29 am

Sylvie’s room had a charm to it that the rest of the mansion had lost to neglect. A four-poster bed with a carved headboard sat against the far wall, dressed in clean white linens that were whiter than the lace curtains. There was a faded floral rug beneath the bed, large enough to prevent her feet from touching the hardwood floor first thing in the morning. The wallpaper was a soft blue with delicate silver vines, slightly worn at the seams and curling near the ceiling, but it gave the room a warmth the house’s darker corridors didn’t share. A window faced the front of the property, and the morning light came through it in a clean, even wash that made the room feel like it belonged to a different house entirely.

Derek’s handsome face filled the screen of her phone as she sat on the edge of the bed, one leg tucked beneath her. He, in turn, was sitting on the floor of her living room with Coco sprawled across his thighs with the boneless contentment of a cat who had decided that the temporary human was an acceptable substitute. The white fluffball had her eyes half-closed, and one paw dangled off his knee as though she’d melted there and couldn’t be bothered to relocate. Derek had attentively come home for lunch specifically to feed her before a business dinner later that evening, despite the fact that his office was a forty-minute drive in the opposite direction.

It was the kind of thoughtfulness that Sylvie was still getting used to, and it was also the kind of thing he did without mentioning it, as though driving eighty minutes round trip to feed her cat was simply what a person did when they cared about someone.

“She barely looked at me when I walked in,” Derek said, scratching Coco behind her ears. “I had to open the can first just to get her to acknowledge my existence.”

“That’s because she has standards.”

Derek laughed and angled the phone toward Coco so that Sylvie could see her face. The cat blinked slowly at the screen, which Sylvie chose to interpret as affection rather than indifference. The team had gotten Coco for her after her father had passed away, and in that time, the cat had trained her to recognize the subtlest of gestures as declarations of love.

A slow blink.

A single headbutt against an ankle.

The rare occasion when Coco chose to sleep on the bed rather than her favorite chair. These were the milestones of their relationship, and Sylvie cherished every one of them.

“Hi, baby girl.” Sylvie softened her voice in the way she reserved exclusively for Coco and occasionally for Bit when he was having a particularly rough day. “I’ll be home next week. I love you, and I miss you so much.”

Coco yawned.

Derek turned the phone back to himself, grinning.

“I think you miss Coco more than you miss me. Which is saying something, because I’m the one holding down the fort over here.”

“You’re not wrong.”

“That’s cold, Sylvie.”

“You knew what you were getting into.”

His grin slowly widened into something warmer, and he lowered his voice. The shift was subtle but unmistakable, as it always was when he moved from humor to honesty.

“In all seriousness, Coco is doing better than I am without you. I miss you.”

Derek had come into her life at an unexpected time. He was patient in a way that didn’t come across as performative, and he’d never once made her feel like her work was an inconvenience, even when it pulled her out of the city for days at a time. Given that his net worth was something she would never earn in her lifetime, she loved that he didn’t act that way.

“I miss you, too.” She meant it more than her tone conveyed, but he knew her well enough by now to read between the lines. “We’ll spend the next few days wrapping up interviews, and we’ll probably head back when the forensics team is finished with the greenhouse. With cold cases like this one, we’ll take periodic trips back to speak to those who are still alive, along with the families of the victims.”

“Will the press release change your plans?”

“Probably not. We’ll work the case with the same method regardless of what the media does with it.” Sylvie glanced at the time on the corner of her phone screen. “Which means I’d better get going. I need to reach out to the second victim’s family today. Dr. Kessler notified the next of kin, and she explained to them that someone from our firm would be in touch.”

“Go save the world.” Derek flashed the camera toward Coco, who was now sauntering toward the bay window in the living room, her tail held high, signaling she was finished with the conversation, even if the humans weren’t. “We’ll be here.”

Sylvie blew a kiss to Coco, told Derek she’d call him later that evening, and ended the video call. She slipped on her blazer, gathered her notebook and phone, and opened the bedroom door.

She stopped short.

Gwenyth was standing in the hallway right outside her door. She wasn’t paying attention to Sylvie at all. Instead, her gaze was directed downward, fixed on the threshold as though it held something only she could see. The gray cardigan hung from her thin shoulders, and her bare feet were pale against the dark hardwood. The corridor behind her stretched toward the staircase in a dim line of faded rose wallpaper and dusty photograph frames, and the sconce lighting was off, leaving her illuminated only by the light spilling from Sylvie’s room. How long she’d been standing there was impossible to say.

The walls in this house were thick, so it wasn’t as if she’d been listening in on Sylvie’s conversation with Derek. What was more unsettling was the stillness of Gwenyth’s posture, the way she stood in the hallway as though she’d been rooted there for some time.

“Gwenyth?” Sylvie kept her voice gentle as she stepped into the hallway. “Are you okay?”