Page 123 of Her Soul to Own

I sit there with my arms wrapped around myself like I can hold the pieces in. But they keep slipping. Like her.

I rise on shaking legs. My entire body trembles with rage and grief and something sharp that I don’t have a name for yet.

The study looks different now. Smaller and suffocating. His trophies aren’t impressive; they’re pathetic. His degrees, his photos, his perfectly curated image, it’s all a fucking lie. A cover for a man who let everything rot behind the walls he built.

I pull out my phone, my hand still shaking as I hit call.

Voicemail. Again.

I stare at the screen.

Coward.

He left all of this in plain sight. The secrets and darkness. The damn journal with my mother’s last words. And he won’t even pick up the fucking phone.

I’m surrounded by everything he wanted me to believe. And none of it is real. I’ve been living with a murderer all these years, and I had no idea.

Now, I’m surrounded by the absence of my father, who was never the person I thought I knew.

My loneliness comes alive like it’s engineered into an oppressive and intentional being. I can feel it crawling up my spine, wrapping around my throat, and reminding me that this house was never meant to keep me safe. It was meant to keep me obedient.

My eyes drift to the fireplace, abandoned and unused. To the desk, still spotless. And then, unbidden, the memory crashes into me, sharp and unwelcome.

I was fifteen and dressed in black, my knees aching in heels I wasn’t tall enough for yet. My mother was in the ground, her casket still fresh in the dirt. The scent of lilies and rain still hung in the air like a bad omen.

And I had tried, God, I had tried, to cry in front of my father. Stupidly and desperately.

He stood exactly where I’m standing now, a glass of scotch in his hand, his posture as rigid as the headstone behind us. His suit was pressed, and his tie perfectly knotted, not a single thread out of place. His face? Carved out of marble. Cold and impossibly still.

Not once did he reach for me. Not a hand on my shoulder. Not a word of comfort. No“I’m sorry.”No“We’ll get through this.”

I stood there, broken open, waiting for something. Anything. A hug, a look, a hint of shared pain.

Instead, he took a sip of his drink and said flatly, “Your tears don’t change anything. Control them.”

He still wouldn’t look at me. Like if he did, he might see a reflection of everything he was guilty of.

Control them.

Like grief was a wild dog I should muzzle. Like losing her was an inconvenience. A crack in the flawless image he clung to like gospel.

I remember choking on a sob, my vision blurring as I scrubbed at my cheeks with the sleeve of my dress, not ashamed of the pain, but of the fact that he saw it, the silence that followed, and the way he turned his back and walked away like it was just another Wednesday. Like she hadn't been the only person who ever loved us both without condition.

Maybe I never knew him. Maybe I only ever knew the version of him that he sold me, the polished man with the sharp smile and sharper lies. The man who taught me not to feel too loud, not to trust too deeply. The man who built an empire on secrets and called it power. The man who taught me that strength was silence. And vulnerability? A sin.

I walk to the window, my fingers trailing along the edge of the bookshelf. The glass is cool beneath my palm. Outside, the estate gardens sprawl in curated symmetry. But tonight, they’re drenched in shadow. The moonlight doesn’t reach them.

It’s all dark. Every inch of it.

And I realize this unresponsiveness isn’t abandonment. It’s strategy and control.

“What are you planning, Dad?” I whisper into the empty space.

There’s no answer. Of course not. He’s always been better at absence.

I turn from the window, walk back across the study, and kneel to pick up the journal. My fingers trace my mother’s initials one more time. I.V. Her final legacy, hidden in a room I was never meant to enter.

She left me breadcrumbs. Now, it’s time I start following them.

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