Chapter4
An ocean away, Lex had received a handful of updates over the previous six months.
During the first week, Victoria forwarded him a letter, claiming it was from Celia. The handwriting on the paper was meticulously neat. "Lex, I've arrived. Everything is fine here, so don't worry." Attached was a photo: a girl standing on a manicured lawn, bathed in bright sunlight.
The second month brought another one: "My knees hurt a little, but I'm okay. I'm waiting for you."
After that, the messages stopped completely. Victoria had a ready excuse. "The school is strictly managed. Cell phones are forbidden midway through the term."
Lex didn't know that I never wrote those letters; the ones sent out were clever forgeries Victoria had commissioned.
He asked multiple times if he could visit her. Victoria rebuffed him every time. "It's a closed campus. No visitations allowed mid-semester. Besides, your father made it clear that she needs to properly reflect on her behavior."
With Harold's name pressing down on him, he couldn't push the issue any further.
That was until that evening, during the sixth month.
Victoria sent a video call request. "Celia misses you."
The screen lit up. A girl sat at a desk, sporting short hair and a school uniform, waving at the camera. The video quality wasn't terrible, and the audio was clear.
"Lex, I miss you so much. I'm really happy here."
Lex stared at her face.
He had looked at it for eighteen years; he could draw it with his eyes closed. The geometric lines of the face in front of him were accurate, but the spirit was entirely wrong. When Celia smiled, the left corner of her mouth lifted a fraction higher than the right; this girl's didn't. When Celia called his name, her pitch naturally dropped at the end, sounding like a blend of a pout and a sigh; this girl's didn't. Most importantly, Celia had a distinct spark in her eyes; this girl's eyes were utterly vacant.
There was one more detail. Ever since she was a little girl, Celia would subconsciously rub her earlobe whenever she was nervous. The girl on the screen never touched her ears once.
"Celia, do you remember that iron box we buried in the backyard when we were kids?"
The girl completely paused for a second before flashing a quick smile. "Of course I do. It holds the drawings I made."
Lex hung up the phone.
There were no drawings in that iron box. It contained a single piece of paper written by Celia—"When I grow up, I'm going to marry you." That was a secret only the two of them knew.
He sat in the pitch-black study, spreading out all the letters and photos he had received onto the desk. The paper was sheer, the handwriting obsessively neat, but every word looked carefully traced. Celia had a habit of dragging out the crossbar of her "t"s; these letters lacked that trait. The face in the photos looked like a completely different person entirely.
He picked up the phone and dialed his assistant. "Look into Shude Academy. Address, registration details, ownership. I want the real information, not the bullshit they fed us."
At two in the morning, his assistant called back.
"Lex, that school has no official website, and the registration info is completely forged. The address is tucked away in a ravine on the border of Switzerland and Germany—it doesn't even show up on maps. I had a local contact check it out. It's a gray building converted from an abandoned chemical plant. Iron gates, high fences, and a brass plaque at the entrance engraved with 'Shude Academy.' There's no way in."
"What about the wire transfers?"
"Everything funneled into an offshore account. The ultimate beneficiary is a shell company belonging to the Astor family."
The air felt completely sucked right out of the room.
Lex stood up sharply. The heavy chair toppled backward with a crash, but he made no move to catch it.
"Book the earliest flight to Zurich. Now."
He reached the door, glancing back at the forged letters, the fake photos, and the dead screen that had held the fabricated video call. He had been conversing with someone who didn't exist. And the real Celia—he had no earthly idea where she was, what she had endured, or whether she was dead or alive.
Headlights slashed through the darkness. The Wentworth manor shrank rapidly in his rearview mirror. He slammed his foot on the accelerator. The plane took off just before dawn. Outside the cabin window, it was pitch black. He closed his eyes, and his mind was instantly flooded with memories of a younger Celia tugging at the hem of his shirt.
Thousands of miles away. Shude Academy.
The final week of the sixth month.
That evening, Maggs dragged me out of the dormitory and shoved me into the storage room at the end of the corridor. There was no explicit reason for it. Perhaps she was simply in a bad mood.
The door slammed shut. The lights stayed off.
I crouched in the corner, blindly touching the star necklace around my throat. Six months. Those letters never received a single reply. No one came.
I had convinced myself that he was just busy. I had convinced myself that he had grown to hate me.
Earlier that afternoon, I had spotted an instructor laughing over a newspaper with another guard in the hallway. I managed to catch a fleeting glimpse. It was Lex. Lex and Victoria. A single headline was printed across the page: Wentworth-Astor Alliance to be Sealed in Wedding Next Month.
He was going to marry Victoria.
I squatted in the suffocating darkness, repeating that headline in my mind three times. Then, the realization hit me: I didn't have the strength to wait anymore.
I had held on to Mom's dying wish to "survive" for six agonizing months. But he didn't want me anymore; he had never planned to come for me at all. My numb fingers brushed against a piece of shattered glass on the cold floor. It must have fallen from the window, and its edges were razor-sharp.
Footsteps ran down the corridor. Muffled by the heavy wooden door, the sounds felt miles away.
I gripped that shard of glass tightly, pressing the sharpest point directly against my wrist.
A memory surfaced—I was very young, and Lex was holding my hand as we crossed a busy street. "Hold on tight to me," he had said. "Don't get lost."
Now, I was finally letting go.
The glass sliced deep into my skin. Blood surged out, thick and warm. I couldn't see its color in the pitch black. It didn't hurt. Compared to the endless torture of the past six months, it didn't hurt at all.
I leaned back against the cold wall as my vision gradually blurred, my body sliding slowly downward. The thud of footsteps in the hallway drew closer and closer, and someone was shouting something. I couldn't make out the words.
The iron door violently burst open, and a pair of polished leather shoes crashed into my failing line of sight.
"Is that you?"
