They returned to the greenhouse that night.
Not out of hope—out of necessity. They needed to understand what Amara had been building. What she'd feared.
It was colder now. The kind of chill that sank into your joints, bone-deep. The overgrown glass structure groaned in the wind like it remembered everything it had been asked to hide.
Xander led the way, flashlight in one hand, a crowbar in the other—just in case.
Aria followed with the notebook clutched to her chest like a shield.
Inside the hidden room, they took their time. Every crevice was searched, every page cataloged. Amara hadn't just been hiding. She'd been collecting. Patterns. Bank records. Messages. Names.
Her father's name came up again and again. But he wasn't alone.
Dalton. Two other board members. A woman named Elise they'd never heard of.
And one sealed plastic envelope, carefully buried beneath a floorboard.
"To Aria."
Aria opened it with shaking hands.
If you're reading this, I'm sorry.
I never wanted you to find this place. I hoped I could come back to you in the open, not like this. But the world we were born into doesn't forgive women like us. It consumes us.
I didn't die. But I let the world believe I did because it was the only way to be free.
Xander helped me disappear. I didn't trust anyone else. Not even you—not because I didn't love you, but because I knew you'd come looking. And I couldn't let you get pulled under too.
If you're here, it means someone broke the rules. It means I was wrong. Be careful who you trust.
He's watching again.
—Amara
Aria read it twice. Three times.
She didn't cry. Not yet. She was too numb.
But something shifted inside her. A bone-deep certainty.
"We have to find her," she said.
Xander nodded. "We will."
Then, in the distance, the unmistakable sound of tires on gravel.
A car door slammed. Another.
Then footsteps—fast and too many.
Xander switched off the flashlight, grabbed her hand.
Aria's heart thundered in her chest as he whispered the only word that mattered now.
"Run."