The cottage creaked like it was remembering her.
Lena stepped into the basement with a smile stretched so tight across her face it hurt. Her boots left muddy tracks on the old wooden stairs. Her hands trembled, not with fear — but anticipation.
She'd cleaned the space.
Cleared the dust. Laid the tools. Adjusted the lighting.
It was beautiful, in a sick kind of way. Intimate. The kind of place where truth comes to die.
On the floor: a chair. Bolted to the ground.
Chains. Not too tight. She wanted Voss to feel her choices.
The smell of bleach still hung in the air.
Soon, it would be blood.
She danced that morning.
In her apartment.
A slow, broken ballet in bare feet across the hardwood floor, dress twirling with each spin. A child's tune hummed under her breath, punctuated with soft, breathy giggles.
Then laughter.
Unhinged. Howling. Stomach-aching laughter.
It came out of her like a scream in reverse.
She clutched the countertop, gasping, hair falling into her face.
"You did it, you brilliant little liar."
Her reflection in the microwave stared back — eyes too wide, cheeks flushed with something feral.
She picked up a butter knife and began slicing the ends of her hair. Laughing the whole time.
She called Voss from a burner.
"Detective?"
Voss's voice was calm. "Lena?"
"I remember everything."
A pause.
Then: "Where are you?"
"Where it started. Where it ends."
She hung up.
She waited in the basement, sitting in the old rocking chair her mother used to read in. Knife in hand. Bare feet. Blood on her palms from cutting herself earlier, just to feel something.
The voices in her head were louder now.
Some screamed. Some wept.
One sang.
She whispered to herself:
"They tried to lock me away."
"I burned them to save myself."
"I am the truth. I am the fire."
She grinned, eyes glistening.
She didn't hear the door open upstairs.
But she felt it.
Voss entered with her gun drawn, flashlight cutting through the dark.
"Lena?" she called out.
No answer.
She descended the basement stairs slowly.
Then stopped.
There, in the middle of the basement, stood Lena.
No shoes.
Blood smeared across her mouth like lipstick.
Eyes wide. Unblinking.
"Welcome," she whispered, her voice like velvet dipped in venom.
Voss's flashlight hit the chained chair.
Her expression didn't change.
"You brought me here to confess?" she said, voice steady.
Lena began to laugh.
Loud.
Too loud.
Like the sound wasn't meant for a human throat.
Voss raised the gun slightly. "Lena—"
"They were going to put me away," Lena said suddenly, tone swinging into a childish whine.
"Mommy said I was wrong. Daddy said I was sick. They lied! THEY ALL LIED!"
Her smile snapped back into place.
"So I fixed it."
"You killed them."
Lena nodded proudly.
"I made it perfect. Just enough blood. Just enough mess. I even cried at the press conference."
"You burned your little brother alive."
Lena's expression changed.
For a second.
Just a second.
A flicker of something real.
Then it was gone.
"He was asleep," she whispered.
"He didn't feel it."
Voss took a step forward.
"You need help."
"I need a witness," Lena said, twirling in place like a ballerina.
"Someone to see my masterpiece. The truth as I wrote it. The lie made flesh."
"Lena—put the knife down."
"I rewrote my childhood, you know?" Lena giggled.
"Page by page. Night by night. Like a fairytale."
"Lena, listen to me—"
"I AM LISTENING!"she snapped. Her voice dropped to a hiss.
"But everyone else talks over me. Screams over me. Cries while I'm carving. They don't understand. They never understand!"
She rushed Voss in a blur.
The detective caught her, twisted her wrist, the knife clattered across the floor.
They struggled — violently, chaotically.
Lena bit her.
Hard.
Voss cried out, elbowed her back, pinned her to the ground.
"You're under arrest!"
Lena stared up at her, panting.
Then…
She smiled.
Blood dripped from her lip.
She whispered: "Then do it. Take me away. Lock me up like they planned."
Voss hesitated.
"I'll burn the world down from the inside," Lena whispered.
Her legs kicked out.
She caught Voss off balance.
Lena was on her in a heartbeat — fists swinging, eyes wild.
The two crashed into the wall. The flashlight burst.
Darkness swallowed them.
Only the candlelight flickered now — and Lena's shrill, beautiful laughter.
Voss's flashlight rolled across the floor as they hit the wall hard, her breath knocked from her chest. Lena was on top of her in seconds, arms flailing with almost inhuman strength, her fingernails digging into Voss's face like claws.
"I WAS THE VICTIM!"she shrieked.
"I was just a little girl! I was supposed to be loved!"
Voss twisted her hips and reversed the hold, pinning Lena beneath her.
"You murdered your family," she growled, hand finding the cuffs on her belt.
"And you enjoyed it."
Lena writhed beneath her, laughing, her head jerking like a marionette with broken strings.
"You didn't even cry when you saw the bodies, did you, detective? You wanted this. You wanted to dance with me!"
"Stop talking—"
"You don't get to tell the story!"Lena screamed, eyes wild, spit flying.
"It's mine. It's ALL MINE!"
Then something snapped in her.
Lena went still.
Smiling again.
A calm, dead kind of smile.
And Voss froze — just a second — too long.
Lena drove her knee up into Voss's stomach and bit into her shoulder, hard. Voss screamed, lost her grip. The cuffs dropped.
Lena shoved her off and lunged toward the corner, fingers fumbling in the dark.
The knife.
She found it.
Voss was staggering up, coughing, one hand gripping her injured side.
Lena came at her like a beast.
Voss dodged left — but not fast enough.
The blade slashed her thigh.
Blood.
Hot and fast.
Voss cried out, collapsed onto her good knee. She reached for her gun, but Lena kicked it across the floor.
"I'm going to make you part of it," Lena whispered, trembling.
"You're going to be the final piece.
The perfect ending."
"Lena—" Voss was panting, bleeding, still gripping her side.
"They'll know. People saw me follow you here. There are cameras. You can't erase me like the others."
Lena stopped.
The blade hovered just inches from Voss's chest.
And she smiled.
"Oh, sweet Alina," she said. "Don't you get it?"
She leaned close, whispering:
"I don't need to erase you. I just need to change the story."
Voss frowned, confused.
Lena rose to her feet, breathing hard.
And smashed the blade into her own shoulder.
A wet, sickening sound.
Voss gasped in horror as Lena screamed, staggering back, blood pouring down her arm.
Then — Lena picked up the cuffs, slapped one on her own wrist, and locked the other to a rusty pipe.
Voss could only watch, helpless and horrified.
Lena's eyes gleamed, euphoric.
"Self-defense," she whispered.
"Mental break. My therapist's dead. My stalker was the forensic analyst. You cornered me. You forced me back here."
She turned her face toward the flame's glow.
"And then you snapped."
It was over in minutes.
Voss passed out from blood loss before she could crawl to the stairs.
Lena lay in the center of the room, soaked in blood, body trembling with exertion and madness. She stared at the ceiling beams, cracked and splintered with age.
Somewhere above, sirens began to wail.
Later…
The news broke like wildfire.
Detective Alina Voss, critically injured in what was being described as a mental health breakdown. She had "ambushed" Lena Cavanaugh at her family's abandoned property.
Lena was found "wounded and shackled."
The press wept for her.
"The girl who survived the fire… survived again."
Images of her in a hospital bed, pale, weak, bruised, and beautiful, flooded the networks. Her voice cracked with carefully placed tears as she spoke of Voss's "obsession," the "accusations," the fear.
"I didn't want to go back there. But she said it would help. I trusted her."
The public believed her.
Why wouldn't they?
She looked the part.
Played it flawlessly.
Voss, still recovering in the ICU, couldn't speak. And when she could, no one was listening.
Her career — gone.
Her name — smeared.
The case — sealed.
Lena stood before a mirror weeks later, her body healed.
Her mind… sharpened.
She pressed her hand to the glass.
"I did it."
"I won."
The reflection smiled.
The one behind her eyes — that one never left.
Lena Cavanaugh was invited to speak at a survivor's gala that fall.
She wore white.
She thanked her doctors.
She wept for Dr. Rowe.
She lit a candle for her family.
And smiled.
Because in the crowd, in the silence between words, she imagined it:
"The Second Family."
Her next masterpiece.