The room was sparse. Stone-tiled floor cool beneath her soles, the air thick with salt and silence. The walls, a washed-out cream peeling gently at the edges, whispered of time and mildew. No paintings. No personal touch. Just a narrow bed, a wooden desk that leaned slightly to the left, and one small window that faced the sea with neither romance nor pity.
Lina stepped into the middle of it all, suitcase thudding against the frame of the bed as she let it fall. She looked around with the dazed vacancy of someone walking into a past life they didn't quite remember consenting to. Her hands hovered in front of her, as though uncertain what to touch, what to claim.
This wasn't a sanctuary. It was a holding cell with nice light.
She walked to the window, lifted the stiff wooden pane, and let the breeze in. It rushed through the small space like it had been waiting. The smell of the Mediterranean—brine, rosemary, wet stone—rushed in behind it, scraping against her thoughts. Her gaze followed the coastline's jagged line until it disappeared into mist.
It was beautiful in that cruel, indifferent way nature always was. It made you feel small. It made me wonder if you'd actually lived at all or if you'd just occupied space until it no longer made sense to try.
Her fingers twitched. For a cigarette. For a pen. For a drink. Something to mark herself alive.
But she hadn't written in over a year. Not a sentence. Not a note. The novel—the novel—sat in limbo, unfinished. Its characters frame Ozen mid-scream in her imagination, waiting for her to come back. Waiting for her to remember.
And now, someone was mailing it to her.
Not the book itself, but pages of it. Out of order. Out of time. Typed, not handwritten. Slipped under her door like a dare.
Lina lit a cigarette with slow precision, inhaling deep, sharp. She leaned out the window, elbows pressing into the old sill. Below, waves churned and dragged themselves across the rocks like they were trying to remember how to reach her.
Her eyes were dry. She hadn't cried in months. Not at the funeral. Not during the investigation. Not when they told her they couldn't determine what had happened because her memory had gone black around the edges of that night like film burning under light.
She wasn't sure which part she mourned more: his death or her silence.
A knock startled her.
It wasn't even loud—just a single, tentative tap. But it echoed in the narrow room like something bigger. Older.
She turned slowly, her heart leaping up to the back of her throat.
There was no one at the door.
Just a page.
Folded once. Placed precisely in the centre of the tile floor.
She hesitated, then crossed the room and crouched to pick it up.
Typed.
Her eyes scanned the lines—familiar and foreign all at once.
> "She stood over him, not sure what had happened, only that it had. The blood didn't scare her. Not as much as the calm. Not as much as the fact that she didn't feel like a murderer, but something far worse: an imposter in her own skin."
Lina sat back on her heels, the words trembling slightly in her hand.
She hadn't brought any drafts with her.
She had deliberately left them—along with her old laptop, old life, and old lies—back in the States. She had wanted a clean break. Or maybe a quiet disappearance. What she hadn't wanted was this.
Proof.
Someone had been watching her.
Worse, someone had access to her work. Her unpublished work. Pages she hadn't shared with anyone—not her editor, not her agent, not even her fiancé.
The thought turned her stomach cold.
She looked out into the hallway. Empty. Dead quiet.
The only movement came from the breeze tugging at the hem of her nightshirt and the distant rustle of vines against the stone outside.
Lina shut the door, turned the lock with a soft click, and backed away slowly.
---
The rest of the night passed in strange pockets of time. She didn't undress. She sat on the bed, cigarette after cigarette burning down to the filter, eyes fixed on the paper now laid out on the desk like evidence.
Each sentence felt like a blade against her skin.
Not because they were untrue—but because they were.
Words she could have written. Words she had written?
She couldn't remember. And that was the part that scared her most.
She lay down just after 3 a.m., fully clothed, her back pressed to the wall. The mattress was thin. The air was icy.
And the house—old, breathing, creaking—settled around her like it knew something she didn't.
Like it had secrets in its bones.
Like it was waiting for her to ask the wrong question.