Chapter 5 THE SECRET IN THE WALLS

POV: Wren

I knock on Callum's door at nine forty-five.

I have been sitting on my bed for forty minutes arguing with myself about this. Half of me says it is not my business. Half of me says I am living in the same house as whatever this secret is, and that makes it very much my business whether I like it or not.

The unknown number wins.

I knock.

Nothing.

I knock again, harder.

The door swings open and Callum is standing there in a grey t-shirt with his hair slightly messy and his eyes doing that thing where they go completely unreadable the moment he seesit'ss me. Like a shutter coming down behind glass.

"It's almost ten," he says.

"I know."

"What do you want, Wren?"

I look at him for a second. Then I hold up my phone with the messages on the screen.

He goes very still.

His eyes move across the texts slowly. Once. Then again. And I watch something happen to his face that I have not seen before. Not anger. Not the careful blankness he usually wears. Something cracked open and raw that he covers up almost immediately, but not quite fast enough.

He takes the phone from my hand.

Reads it a third time.

Gives it back.

"Close the door," he says. Steps back into his room.

I have never been in Callum Voss's room before.

I do not know what I expected. Something perfect. Something that matches the version of him that walks through Hartfield like the ground is grateful for his footsteps.

It is not that.

There is a whiteboard on the wall covered in a schedule so detailed it looks like a military operation. Theo's name is everywhere. Doctor's appointments in red. Medication times in blue. School pickups circled in black. There is a medical file on the desk thick enough to be a textbook. And on the nightstand, slightly hidden under a hoodie like he did not mean for anyone to see it, is a framed photo of a woman with golden hair and Callum's exact eyes, laughing at something outside of the frame.

His mother.

I look away fast.

Callum is standing by the window with his arms crossed and his jaw tight. He is staring at the floor.

"How long ago did you get that text?" he asks.

"About an hour ago."

"Did you reply?"

"I asked who it was. They said someone who knows you better than I do. Then they went dead."

He nods slowly. This confirms something he already suspected.

"Is it Sable?" I ask.

He is quiet for a moment. "Probably."

"What does she have on you, Callum?"

He looks up at me then. Fast. Sharp.

"Nothing," he says.

"That text mentioned the medical centre. It mentioned something that happened six months ago. It said your father doesn't know." I keep my voice level. "That is nothing."

He holds my gaze for a long time. I can see the calculation going on behind his eyes. How much to say. How much to protect?. He has the look of someone who has been carrying something alone for so long that the idea of putting it down feels more dangerous than the weight.

"Theo had an episode six months ago," he says finally. Low. Careful. "A bad one. I was at practice. He was home with a sitter, and she panicked and called an ambulance instead of following the protocol I left her. The hospital called me, not my dad. I got there first, and I handled it, and Theo was fine."

"But your dad found out?"

"No." His jaw tightens. "He was in Tokyo. I didn't tell him."

I stare at him. "You handled your nine-year-old brother's medical emergency alone and never told your father."

"Theo was fine."

"Callum"

"He was fine." His voice is sharp now. Protective. "My father's version of handling things is pulling Theo out of his school and moving him to a facility two hours away where the specialists are better, and the waiting lists are shorter, and Theo is surrounded by strangers and away from everything he knows. I have seen him threaten it twice. So yes, I handled it, and I didn't tell him, and I would do it again."

The room is very quiet.

I look at the whiteboard. At the red appointment,d the blue medication times and the circled pickups. I look at the medical file on the desk. I look at the photo of the woman who is not here anymore.

Callum Voss has been running a one-person operation to keep his little brother's life from falling apart, and he has been doing it since he was sixteen years old.

"Someone knows," I say quietly. "And they are going to use it."

"I know."

"If they tell your father."

"I know, Wren." He turns back to the window. "I said I know."

I stand there. I should leave. This is where I leave. This is the part where I remind myself that this is not my family and not my problem,m and I have enough of my own.

But I think about Theo's face this morning. About the way he grabbed my hand at dinner. About seven facts about Saturn and a bread roll clutched in a sleeping fist.

"Does Sable know the full story?" I ask.

"She knows enough. She was with me when I got the hospital call. She drove me there." Something moves across his face. "I trusted her."

Past tense. Very past tense.

I nod slowly. "Okay."

"Okay, what?"

"Okay, I won't say anything." I move toward the door. "But Callum. Whoever sent that text, it wasn't a warning. It was a countdown. They want you scared. They want you to make mistakes." I stop in the doorway and look back at him. "Don't make mistakes."

He looks at me with an expression I cannot fully read.

"Why do you care?" he asks. Not mean. Genuinely asking.

I think about it for a second.

"Because Theo does not deserve to lose anything else," I say.

I go back to my room.

I am almost asleep when I hear it.

A sound from downstairs. Soft. Rhythmic. Like someone talking very quietly on the phone.

I look at the time. Eleven fifty-three.

I get up. Open my door a crack.

It is Gerard. Callum's father. Standing in the hallway downstairs with his back to the stairs, phone pressed to his ear, voice barely above a whisper.

I should go back to bed.

But then I hear three words that pin me to the floor.

"The boy knows," Gerard says into the phone.

A pause.

"Yes. About all of it. We need to move before he figures out the rest."

My hand grips the doorframe.

The rest.

There is more.

Whatever Callum is hiding about Theo, his own father is hiding something bigger.

And from the sound of that voice, whatever it is, it is already in motion.