Four days earlier
I searched for the letter until the house itself seemed to push back, as though the walls had grown a quiet will of their own. I overturned drawers, lifted cushions, traced my fingers along shelves and corners I had never bothered to notice before. Nothing. The letter had not simply learned how to walk and slipped away on its own. That much I knew.
Someone had taken it. And it was not my husband, Davis. If it had been him, I would not have been standing there, heart tight, mind racing, trying to convince myself to breathe normally. I told myself not to panic. Not yet. The house was watched. Cameras in every corridor, every room. Whatever had happened would have left a mark. An outsider would show. A member of my staff would show too. No one moved in this house unseen.
So I went straight to the control room.
I played the footage once. Then again, slower, my finger hovering over the controls as if hesitation alone could summon the truth. The screens glowed steadily, obedient, familiar.
There was no blackout, no technical tantrum, none of the small warnings machines usually give before they betray you. Instead, the recording simply skipped. A clean, soundless jump. A portion of time gone, so perfectly placed it made my stomach turn. The gap began at the exact moment I had set the letter down.
That was when the unease truly arrived, settling into me like a second pulse.
I checked another angle. Then another. Different cameras, different rooms. The same absence. The same smooth silence. No flicker, no static, no distortion. Just a piece of reality carefully lifted out, as if it had never existed. It was too deliberate to excuse, too elegant to dismiss.
I backed up everything that remained, locked the system, and wrote down every access point by hand, slowly, as if the act itself might steady me. Whoever had done this had not rushed. They had known the system. They had known the timing. They had known exactly what they were erasing.
By then, the question was no longer where the letter had gone. It was who did not want me to see it leave and why?.
And how, in God's name, they had known about it in the first place. Worse still, how they had access to my home. Was it one of my own servants? The thought tasted bitter before I could swallow it.
I decided then to bring in a specialist. Someone who could dissect the system properly, who could recover what had been removed or confirm what my instincts were already whispering. Corrupted footage could be fixed.
A deliberate absence was something far more dangerous.
While I was still spiraling over the missing letter, pacing quietly and trying to stitch together a reality that kept slipping through my fingers, my husband was facing a disaster of his own. A house fire. A loyal right hand man dead. Sensitive files stolen. The safe found open like a mouth that had screamed and been silenced.
Robert had died inside that house. Davis was informed, but he did not go to the scene. He wanted no trace of himself anywhere near a police investigation. That, after all, was why the house had been registered in Robert's name, despite Robert never living there.
Fate, cruel and precise, had intervened. On that very day, Robert had happened to be inside the house when I sent Apollo to steal the files and burn the place to the ground.
I drew in a sharp breath, the kind that scrapes on the way down.
My phone was still in my hand. The video was still playing, indifferent to the way my pulse had begun to riot.
A man in a mask stepped into my house. Calm. Unhurried. He moved like someone returning to a place that already belonged to him. No hesitation, no curious glance around. Just purpose. He went straight to the large framed picture in the living room, the one spot no one should have known about, the one I had convinced myself was clever enough to be invisible.
My stomach fell, as if the floor beneath me had quietly given way.
He lifted the frame, reached behind it, and drew out the letter.
That alone would have been enough.
But he wasn't finished.
He walked toward the camera, slow and deliberate, until the frame filled with him. I could see the weave of the mask, the steadiness of his breathing, the patience in the way he held himself. He stopped and stared directly into the lens for several long seconds, raising the letter into view like a quiet confession or a threat. He didn't rush. He didn't fumble.
This wasn't theft. It was a message.
He wanted me to see him. Wanted me to understand that this was not chance, not luck, not a mistake. He had come for it, and he had found it.
The screen went black.
"Babe."
Davis's voice cut through the moment, sudden and sharp, and I flinched before I could stop myself.
"Yes," I answered too quickly, already turning toward him. My face betrayed me before I had the chance to arrange it into something believable. I could feel the damage there, something split open, something exposed to the light.
He studied me, his eyes narrowing just enough to show concern. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah. I'm fine," I said, forcing a brightness that sounded borrowed, like a bad joke told at the wrong time.
He didn't seem convinced, but he let it go. After a brief pause, he rested a hand on my shoulder, gentle and grounding, unaware of the pressure building in my chest, unaware that my world had just quietly shifted.
"Let's go," he said.
I nodded and slid my phone away, as if hiding it might soften the truth it carried. As if putting it out of sight could pull me back to who I had been before the screen went dark.
Then we started our journey, me carrying a secret that already felt heavier than the road ahead.