The air in the drawing room remained stagnant, heavy with the stench of Silas's cold pragmatism. Enock stood his ground, his gaze darting between Silas and his wife, searching for the flicker of a lie.
"Someone sent that relay from this house," Enock repeated, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "Someone who knew about the Tinder account, who knew about Mild, and who had the authority to point Apex Global at a specific target. If it wasn't you, then who else has a key to the front door and the soul of a traitor?"
Silas sank into his armchair, his expression shifting from anger to a hollow, haunting realization. He exchanged a long, meaningful look with his wife.
"There was one other," Silas's wife said, her voice barely audible. "The girl we brought in to assist Shelmith. She was a mute housemaid, a ward of the Foundation. We called her 'Lina.'"
Enock frowned. "A maid? You're telling me a mute servant orchestrated a multi-million dollar mercenary interception?"
"You don't understand," Silas countered, leaning forward. "Lina wasn't just staff. Shelmith was lonely. She hated the high-society dolls we tried to befriend her with. She gravitated toward Lina. They were inseparable, almost like sisters. Shelmith even spent months learning sign language just so they could have a world that was entirely private—a language no one else in this house understood."
"They whispered in their hands for years," his mother added, her eyes distant. "We thought it was a charming hobby. But if Shelmith was planning a leak, Lina was the only one she would have trusted to help. Lina knew her schedules, her passwords, and her secrets."
"Where is she now?" Enock demanded.
"She disappeared the day of the accident," Silas admitted, a grimace crossing his face. "In the chaos of the funeral and the scrubbing of the files, we assumed she had simply fled out of grief or fear of being blamed. We didn't care to look for a nameless servant. But she had a key. She had access to the terminal."
Enock felt a chill crawl down his spine. If Lina was the one talking to Shelmith on Tinder using Mild's name, she hadn't been helping Shelmith—she had been harvesting her. She had used their silent language to gain Shelmith's absolute trust, then sold her out to Apex Global, using the "scholarship ghost" as a convenient mask.
"She played her," Enock whispered, his disgust shifting from the parents to this phantom girl. "She used the only person who treated her like an equal and led her straight into a death trap."
Back in the library, Arm and Style had heard every word through the grate. Arm's hand gripped the edge of the table so hard the wood groaned. He remembered Lina. He remembered the quiet girl who always stood in Shelmith's shadow, her hands moving in rapid, fluid motions that looked like dancing.
"Lina didn't flee because she was scared," Arm said, looking at Style. "She fled because she had the files. Apex missed the courier, but the courier was supposed to meet Mild—or the person she thought was Mild. If Lina was the one Shelmith was meeting..."
"Then Lina has the documents," Style finished, her eyes wide. "And she's been hiding for two years, waiting for the heat to die down. Arm, if she sees you or Enock coming, she'll disappear forever."
Arm stood up, his mind working with a cold, frantic clarity. He didn't need a sports car or a ministry seat. He needed the girl who had stolen his sister's voice.
"Style, give me the car keys," Arm commanded. "I know where she went. Shelmith had a small cottage in the north, a place she told Lina about in their 'silent language.' My parents never went there because it was too modest for them. That's where the ghost is hiding."
Style didn't hesitate this time. She pressed the keys into his palm. "If you find her, Arm... don't be a Golden Boy. Be a brother."
Arm bolted for the service exit, leaving the library behind. He had ten days to find a mute girl in a silent cottage before his father was sworn into a seat built on a sister's grave?
The tension in the Armitage foyer was a physical weight, thick enough to choke. As Arm reached for the heavy brass handles of the front door, his father's voice rang out, not with his usual cold authority, but with a rare, trembling edge of desperation.
"Stop, Armitage!" Silas shouted, his footsteps echoing on the marble. "You are not leaving this house."
Arm turned, his eyes burning. "You heard Enock. Lina is out there. The files are out there. I'm done being a prisoner of your reputation."
"It's a trap, you fool!" his mother cried, stepping forward to block his path. She reached out, her hands shaking as she gripped his blazer. "Shelmith is gone. You are the only child we have left. Don't you see? If someone is pulling these strings—if Lina or Apex or some other ghost is waiting at that cottage—they aren't waiting for the files. They are waiting for the Armitage heir to finish what they started with your sister. They want to wipe us out."
Silas nodded, his face pale. "We will go. The security detail and I will handle the cottage. You stay here, where it's safe."
Arm let out a harsh, hollow laugh, pulling back from his mother's touch. "Safe? Like Shelmith was safe? You talk about family, but you let her murderer walk free for two years to protect a seat in the Ministry. You didn't care about her justice; you cared about your optics."
He stepped closer to his father, his voice dropping to a low, serrated whisper. "I don't believe you care about me, Father. I think you care about the 'Masterpiece' you've spent eighteen years painting. I am going. Either you let me go with you, or I'll find my own way there and walk in alone. Which risk are you willing to take?"
The silence that followed was agonizing. Silas looked at his son and saw, for the first time, a reflection of his own ruthless resolve—but directed squarely at him.
"Fine," Silas rasped. "But you stay in the armored transport. You don't leave my sight."
The mission to the northern cottage was no longer a secret. Enock stepped out from the shadows of the hallway, leaning on his good arm, his eyes sharp. "You're going to need someone who can actually decode whatever Lina has hidden. I'm coming. And don't bother arguing—the Governor's son doesn't take orders from a disgraced Minister-aspirant."
Style walked up beside Arm, her current car keys still clutched in her hand. "And I'm coming to make sure my 'betrothed' doesn't get himself killed before I get my car," she said, though her eyes betrayed a deeper, more genuine concern.
As the black SUVs sped toward the northern coast, the city lights faded into the rearview mirror. The road grew narrow and winding, flanked by dense pines and the crashing waves of the Atlantic. They were heading toward the "Sister of Silence," the girl who had stolen a voice and a legacy.
Mild was left behind at the apartment, the "scholarship ghost" finally safe from the immediate crossfire, yet still the center of the web they were about to unravel.
The black SUVs pulled into the gravel drive of the northern cottage as the moon was swallowed by thick coastal clouds. The house was a modest, weathered structure of grey stone and cedar, standing precariously on the edge of a jagged cliff. It was a place of solitude—the only place where Shelmith had ever felt truly out of her parents' reach.
The Vanishing ActSilas's security team fanned out instantly, their tactical lights cutting through the mist. Arm pushed open the door of the lead vehicle before it had fully stopped, ignoring his father's shout. He sprinted toward the porch, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"Lina!" he yelled, the sound whipped away by the ocean wind.
The front door was unlocked, swaying slightly on its hinges. Inside, the cottage was frozen in time. A half-drunk cup of tea sat on the small kitchen table, still lukewarm. In the hearth, the embers of a fire were still glowing a dull, pulsing orange.
"She was just here," Enock said, crouching by the fireplace. He pointed to a small pile of ash in the grate. "She was burning something. Scraps of paper... and look."
He pulled a small, charred object from the soot with a pair of tweezers. It was a SIM card, melted beyond recovery.
"Search the perimeter!" Silas roared to his men. "She couldn't have gone far on foot!"
But as Arm stood in the center of the small living room, he noticed something the guards had missed. On the wall, a single framed photograph of Shelmith had been turned facedown. He lifted it. Tucked behind the glass was a small note written in a cramped, hurried hand—not in words, but in the diagrammed movements of sign language.
"She knew we were coming," Arm whispered, a cold realization dawning on him. "She didn't run because she was scared of us. She ran because she realized the 'Mild' identity was no longer a safe shield."
In the dim, salt-crusted light of the cottage, Arm stood over the small wooden table. While the guards shouted outside and his father paced the porch like a caged animal, Arm focused on the note he had found behind the photo of Shelmith.
It wasn't a letter. It was a series of sketched hands in various positions—stills of sign language.
"Enock, come here," Arm called out, his voice tight.
Enock hurried over, his brow furrowing as he looked at the sketches. "It's sign language. I don't speak it. Do you?"
"Shelmith tried to teach me once," Arm whispered, his fingers tracing the drawings. "I was too busy with polo and Foundation meetings to pay attention. But I remember the basics. She called it our 'Secret Air.'"
Arm began to mimic the hand shapes drawn on the paper.
The first gesture: A hand over the heart, then moving outward. Friend.
The second gesture: Two fingers tapping the wrist. Time.
The third gesture: A fist opening into a flat palm. Release/Truth.
"Friend... Time... Truth..." Arm struggled. Then he saw the final sketch. It was a hand shaped like a bird's wing, but with a jagged line through it.
"The Broken Wing," Arm gasped. "That's what she called the storage unit at the old Foundation headquarters. It was an annex they slated for demolition but never tore down."
As Arm deciphered the gestures, he noticed something carved into the wooden table itself, hidden under a lace doily. It was a single word in English, scratched deep into the grain: MOTHER.
The air in the room seemed to drop ten degrees. Arm looked out the window at his mother, who was standing by the SUV, her face a mask of perfect, maternal concern.
"Lina wasn't running from the family," Arm realized, his voice trembling. "She was running from her. My mother didn't just know about the files, Enock. She was the one Shelmith was trying to expose. The 'anonymous offshore account' that hired Apex? It wasn't my father. It was the woman who gave birth to us."
Enock looked through the window at the elegant woman in the distance. "It makes sense. Your father is obsessed with the Ministry seat, but your mother... she's the one who manages the Foundation's private equity. She's the one with the most to lose if the money-laundering came to light."
Arm looked back at the sketches. The very last hand position wasn't a word. It was a direction. The fingers were pointing not toward the door, but toward the floorboards beneath the heavy cast-iron stove.
Arm knelt, ignoring the soot staining his expensive trousers. He pried up a loose board and reached into the dark. His fingers brushed against something cold and metallic. He pulled it out: it was a voice recorder wrapped in a silk scarf that had belonged to Shelmith.
"If she's mute, why leave a recorder?" Enock asked.
"Because it's not her voice," Arm said, his thumb hovering over the play button.
The silence in the cottage was absolute, save for the rhythmic crashing of the waves against the cliffs outside. Arm's thumb pressed the 'Play' button. The recording was grainy, filled with the hiss of wind, but the voice that emerged was unmistakably his mother's—younger, panicked, and cold.
"I couldn't bring a broken thing into this family, Silas would never have accepted a child with a defect. The other woman, the commoner... her girl was perfect. Healthy. Quiet. It was so easy to switch the tags in the chaos of that clinic. No one knew. Shelmith is the heir this legacy deserves. My real child... she is a ghost now. She will live her life in silence elsewhere."
The recording cut to a second clip, years later. Shelmith's voice, trembling but resolute: "I found her, Mother. I found the clinic records. I know I'm not yours. I know who the mute girl in the kitchen really is. I'm taking the files to the press. I won't let you keep my sister in the shadows while I wear her crown."
The device clicked off. Arm felt the world tilt. His hand shook so violently the recorder nearly hit the floorboards. He looked at Silas, whose face had gone a sickly, ashen grey. His father looked like a man who had just realized his entire life was a house built on a graveyard.
The door creaked open. Arm's mother stepped in, her eyes scanning the room. She saw the recorder. She saw the way Arm looked at her—not with rebellion, but with utter horror.
"Silas? Arm?" she began, her voice still holding that practiced, aristocratic calm. "The guards say the trail is cold. We should leave."
"You switched them," Silas whispered, his voice a broken rasp. "Shelmith wasn't ours. And the girl... the maid... Lina. She was my daughter? My real daughter?"
The woman froze. The mask of the perfect Minister's wife didn't crack; it simply dissolved, revealing the hollow core beneath. She didn't cry. She didn't apologize.
"I did what was necessary for the Armitage name," she said, her voice turning sharp as glass. "I gave you a healthy heir. I gave you a daughter who could speak the language of power. And when Shelmith grew sentimental and tried to find that 'commoner' mother—when she tried to ruin us with the truth—I had to stop her. A mother protects her nest, Silas. Even from the birds that don't belong in it."
Arm stepped back, revolted. "You killed her because she found out you stole her life. And you kept your own biological daughter as a mute servant in your house? You watched her clean your floors while you knew she was your blood?"
"She was a reminder of my failure," his mother spat. "I gave her a job. I gave her food. That was more than she deserved."