Page 41 of Goldsin

He’s standing in the depths of the room, away from any windows or doors.

“Who are you?” I approach him cautiously. “How do you know me? And what’s inside there?”

Damien chuckles, purposely moving the envelope from one hand to the other. “Why don’t you take a look for yourself?”

He hands me the thick folder overflowing with papers, and I take it from him. As I flip through the pages, each one reveals a missing piece of the story I’ve been following like a silent prayer. The difference between these pages and the ones in the diary strike me, stealing all the air from my lungs.

My eyes widen as my muscles stiffen at the defeating realization I had it all wrong. All fucking wrong.

My throat thickens as disjointed phrases leap off the pages at me.

“Master is back ... Master says I’m pretty ... Master doesn’t like it when I cry ... Master says he loves me.”

My hands shake as I scan the pages.

“Master doesn’t like it when I call him by his name.”

Written in my mother’s handwriting.

“Lucian wants me dead.”

CHAPTER NINE

AURELIA

“Lucian Harrow,” I say under my breath. His name tastes like poison on my tongue. “What did you do to her?”

The words inked on the worn pages spiral in the backs of my eyes while my fingers tremble, holding onto the truth as it unfolds. The maroon folder Damien handed to me discreetly earlier now lies abandoned on the mahogany shelves nearby.

These are the missing pages from my mother’s diary, and the secrets hidden within them threaten to shatter everything I thought I knew about her death.

Full of dread, I read the words scrawled across the page. Words that suggest Lucian Harrow was involved in her suicide.

An uninvited memory washes over me.

Lucian’s blue eyes are vacant as he looks down at me from his towering height. A height so high for a little girl ofonly eight years old. A smirk tugs at his lips as he toys with one of his smelly cigars.

The sun shines over us, yet no light can reach us. No—only darkness is present. That heavy, slimy kind of darkness that suffocates the naïve mind of a child; shatters their perception of life.

“Remember your place, golden one,” he says. “You’re nothing more than an orphan who got lucky.”

His friends laugh, a raucous sound, as I flinch.

Why can they laugh? Why is it that when I do he gets mad?

This day is the day I’ll slowly learn who I’m meant to be ... before learning who I really am.

The memory fades, and my stomach twists into a knot at the thought that my mother might not have taken her own life but was killed by one of the most powerful men in Seattle.

My thoughts race, trying to piece together the puzzle of my mother’s tragic past, when I notice something.

Damien is gone.

I didn’t even hear him leave the room.

Panic claws its way up my throat, making it difficult to breathe.

Standing here alone, with the weight of my mother’s darkest secrets in my hands, leaves me feeling vulnerable and exposed.

---