Page 60 of Vintage

My eyes scanned the hurried handwriting. As I read, the weight of Willow's words settled over me, a chilling reminder of the darkness we’ve all faced. But I also felt a spark of determination. No matter what, I would fight for Amir.

“What does it say?” Reese asked, clearly intrigued.

I looked over at Reese and shrugged, finishing up the letter. With a smile, I ripped it into shreds and tossed it in the trash. Then, I took her hand and headed over to the doctor who was waiting to check on me.

It's finally over. My fate won against Willow's curse.

Chapter Twenty Six

The old Victorian house stood before me like a forgotten relic, its windows dark and hollow, its peeling paint the only sign of the years that had passed. The cursed mansion of Willow Crest. The place that had haunted my every thought for as long as I could remember. Its decaying walls held more secrets than I could have ever imagined, and with every step I took toward it, I could feel the weight of those secrets pressing on my chest, suffocating me.

I hadn’t meant to come back here, not like this. But the pieces of the puzzle had been falling into place one by one, and there was no turningback now. The haunting of this place, the rumors of ghosts, of curses, they were just that—rumors. I had always thought there was something more to it, something I couldn’t understand. But now, as I stood in the overgrown garden, I knew the truth was far darker than any folklore could ever explain.

I had followed the clues, piecing together every odd thing I’d witnessed since Amir and I had come to Willow Crest. The odd occurrences. The strange happenings. The whispers in the dark. All of it. It all pointed to one person. One person who was more than just a victim of this house—he was the orchestrator of the madness.

Ace.

But Ace wasn’t just a man tormented by the death of his sister. He was a man torn apart by his own mind. The realization hit me like a slap to the face.

I hadn’t understood it before. The way he was there but really wasn’t. Always watching. Always lurking. He had been in our lives long before I truly knew who he was. I thought I was dealing with someone unknown or someone who was broken by grief after hearing the story from Ro. But Ace was hiding something much more dangerous. Something that had turned him into a monster.

I pulled open the heavy front door, the creaking of the hinges echoing in the quiet night air. I wasn’t sure why I was still here in this forsaken place. Maybe it was the desperate need to understand how things had spiraled so horribly out of control.

I moved cautiously through the dimly lit halls from the peeking light of the sunset, my hand resting on the worn banister, feeling the cold wood beneath my fingertips. The air in the house was thick with dust, the kind of dust that seemed to cling to every surface, every corner.

There had been rumors about Willow Crest being cursed, about the deaths that surrounded it, but none of it made sense to me until now. The pieces were finally in place. It wasn’t the house that was cursed. It wasn’t the spirits of the past that haunted us.

It was Ace.

Darius had stumbled across a journal that day, buried deep in one of the mansion's forgotten rooms, a dusty thing filled with scribbled notes and disjointed thoughts by a little boy. He brought it as a hope to gather evidence but what we never understood or we all ignored was right in front of us.

The handwriting was familiar, that’s what Darius said when Ace left us that day after my accident, though he couldn’t place where he had seen it before. But as I read again, after Willow’s letter, the truth began to unfold before me, piece by agonizing piece.

The first part of the journal had been written years ago, before Amir ever entered the picture. It was Ace’s account of his life, then his torment. His mind had fractured from the constant abuse, the bullying, and the trauma of losing his sister, Willow.

Willow had been his anchor, the person he clung to in a world that had torn him apart. When she died, Ace had cracked. The death of his sister, the one person he thought he couldn’t live without, had shattered him.

But what I didn’t know—what none of us had known—was that Ace hadn’t died that night. He had been saved. His family, desperate to protect him from his tormentors, had changed his identity. They had sent him away to California to start fresh. But the trauma had never left him. It had festered beneath the surface, waiting to burst.

And then there was Amir.

Amir, with his striking resemblance to Tyson—the boy who had tormented Ace for years. Amir was the trigger. He reminded Ace of everything he hated about himself, everything he had lost. That was why Ace had come back to Willow Crest. That was why he had been so obsessed with Amir from the moment we arrived.

I turned the corner and froze.

Ace was standing in the dim light of the hallway, his back to me, his silhouette framed by the cracked wallpaper and broken windows. But there was something about him. Something off. His posture was rigid, tense, like he was holding onto a fragile thread of control.

He wasn’t supposed to be here. No one was supposed to know, I’d visit this place.

Dread crawled up my spine.

“Amery,” he said, his voice a rasp that sent a chill down my spine. He didn’t turn around, but I could feel his presence as though he were right next to me. “You’ve been digging. You shouldn’t have.”

I swallowed, my heart pounding in my chest. The truth was out now, and I was staring it in the face. The Ace we knew, the one who had been around Darius and the MC, the one who had appeared kind and loyal, was nothing but a mask.

“I know what you’ve done,” I said, my voice steady despite the turmoil raging inside of me. “I know what you’ve been hiding.”

He finally turned, and I saw it then—the confusion in his eyes. The fractured look of someone who had been torn apart by his own mind. He was sick, in more ways than one. His trauma had warped him, had turned him into something unrecognizable. And the truth about his sister’s death had driven him to the brink of madness.

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