Chapter 6 The First Question

Elena did not sleep.

She lay in bed with the phone face down on her chest, like it might bite her if she turned it over. Every time a car passed outside, she held her breath.

At six, she gave up. She showered, put on a plain gray dress, and tied her hair back. She looked in the mirror and practiced her calm face until it stopped looking fake.

At seven, a black car pulled up outside the Hart house.

Elena saw it from the stairs. So did everyone else. Martha stopped wiping the table. Her mother stood frozen in the kitchen doorway with a cup in her hand. Even her father came out of his study and pushed the curtain aside with one finger.

Nobody said a word.

Elena picked up her bag and walked out the front door. She did not look back. She could feel their eyes on her neck the whole way.

Adrian was standing beside the car. Dark suit. No smile. He opened the back door for her and waited.

"Good morning," she said.

"You look tired."

"You don't say good morning?"

"I say true things," he said. "Get in."

She almost laughed. She got in.

She thought he would take her somewhere expensive. A hotel with white tablecloths. A place where people would see them and talk.

Instead, the car stopped outside a tiny diner on a side street. The sign was faded. One letter was missing. Through the window, she saw an old man flipping eggs and a waitress with a pencil behind her ear.

Elena stared at it. Then at him.

"Here?"

"They make good coffee," Adrian said. "And nobody here cares who I am."

The waitress clearly knew him. She brought two coffees without asking and called him "honey." Adrian said thank you. He did not even blink.

Elena watched him over her cup. In her first life, she had sat at many tables with this man. Family dinners. Holiday parties. He always sat at the far end and left early. She had thought he was proud. Maybe he had just been tired of rooms full of people who wanted something.

"You are staring," he said.

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry." He took a small black notebook from his jacket and opened it. "We had a deal. Questions. Honest answers."

Her stomach tightened. "Right now?"

"Right now."

He clicked his pen. The diner noise faded. The man at the grill was humming something old.

"When did you stop loving my brother?"

Elena looked down at her coffee.

The night he died, she almost said. The night he held my wrist with blood on his hand and asked me to disappear.

The words were right there. She could feel them on her tongue.

She swallowed them.

"The night I understood he would never look at me," she said. "Not really. Not the way I looked at him."

It was not a lie. It was just not the whole truth.

Adrian watched her for a long time. She made herself hold still. She made herself not look away.

Then he wrote something in the notebook. She could not see what.

"That was honest," he said.

"How do you know?"

"Your voice changed." He closed the notebook. "People's voices change when it costs them something."

She did not know what to say to that. So she picked up her phone and set it on the table between them.

"Something happened last night," she said. "I need to show you."

She turned the screen toward him. The message was still there.

Congratulations on your engagement, Miss Hart. I look forward to meeting you very soon.

Adrian read it once.

Something changed in his face. It was very small. His jaw went a little harder. His fingers went flat on the table. If she had not been watching so closely, she would have missed it.

"When did this come?"

"Around one in the morning."

"Did you answer it?"

"No."

"Good." He took the phone from her. "May I?"

She nodded.

He stepped outside the diner and made a call. She watched him through the window. He stood very straight in the cold morning air, talking low and fast. He did not look like a man talking about a strange text. He looked like a man who had been waiting for one.

When he came back, he slid the phone across the table to her.

"The number is dead," he said. "It was turned off an hour after it sent the message. It was bought with cash. No name."

Her hands went cold around her cup.

"You know who sent it," she said quietly.

He did not answer that. Instead, he reached into his jacket again and put two things on the table. A white key card. And a small piece of paper with a phone number written in neat black ink.

"The card opens the top floor of Cole Group," he said. "My floor. Ms. Reed will expect you."

"And this?"

"My private number. Very few people have it."

Elena looked at the paper. Then at him.

"Why are you giving me this?"

"Because you are going to be my wife," he said, "and someone just sent my wife a message at one in the morning." He paused. "If that number ever writes to you again, you call me. Not your father. Not Damien." His eyes held hers. "Me."

Something warm moved in her chest. She did not trust it. She did not know what to do with it.

In seventeen years, Damien had never once said, call me.

She folded the paper and put it in her bag, right next to her heart.

"Okay," she said.

He drove her home himself. He did not talk on the way. Neither did she. But it was a different kind of quiet from the one she knew. It did not feel empty. It felt like resting.

At the gate, he said, "Tomorrow. Same time."

"More questions?"

"Many more."

The car pulled away. Elena stood on the steps and watched it go until it turned the corner.

Then she went inside.

The house was quiet now. Her mother had gone out. Her father had gone to the office. Martha was humming somewhere in the laundry room.

Elena climbed the stairs slowly. For the first time in two days, her shoulders felt light. She was almost smiling.

She opened her bedroom door.

And stopped.

Elise was sitting on her bed.

She was not smiling. She was not talking. She was holding a small blue notebook in both hands. Elena's notebook. It was open.

Elena knew which page it was before she even looked. She could see her own handwriting from the door, sharp and black.

4. Do not let Elise die.

Slowly, Elise looked up. Her face was white. Her eyes were wet.

"Lena," she whispered. "Why did you write this?”