I shove the files into my bag, my hands shaking. There's something else gnawing at the edges of my mind. Something more.
The closet door at the back of the servants’ room is slightly ajar. I cross the room in two steps and tug it open fully. Inside: nothing but a dusty floor, peeling walls, and a loose floorboard. My breath catches.
I drop to my knees and wedge my fingers under the edge of the plank, prying it up. Dust fills my nose, making my eyes water.
Beneath the floorboard lies a single, battered object: a leather journal, the spine cracked and the corners worn soft with time. I lift it out carefully, like it might fall apart in my hands. The name scrawled inside the front cover makes my heart break:Valeria Thomas.
I sit back against the wall and crack it open, flipping past the first few empty pages until the inked words begin, messy and desperate.
April 17
I don't know who to trust anymore. I hear them at night—the clicks on the phone line, the whispers behind closed doors. Even when I’m smiling at the charity luncheons, they’re watching me.
May 2
Daniel says I’m imagining things. That I’m stressed. That I need a rest. He’s started suggesting medication. “Just to help,” he says. Help with what? Forgetting?
May 19
My mother was right. Men like him—men of power, of greed, of privilege—they don’t love like we do. Love isn't love to them. It's ownership. A means to an end. She warned me before the wedding. I didn’t listen.
June 4
I think he’s setting me up. Gaslighting me. Things go missing: my jewelry, letters, my birth control pills. When I ask, he laughs and kisses my forehead and tells me I must have misplaced them. I can't breathe sometimes, like the walls are closing in. I feel trapped in this golden cage he built. And I can’t tell anyone. Because who would ever believe me over him?
I want to stop reading, but I don’t stop. I can’t.
Entry after entry paints a picture not of a deranged woman, but of a woman being systematically broken down. Stripped of her autonomy. Isolated. Made to doubt her own reality.
Exactly what Jack—and Aubrey—are doing to me now.
The final entries grow more erratic, the handwriting sharp and jagged.
July 11
He said if I keep causing problems, he’ll make sureI’m taken care of. Forever. I think he means it. I have to find a way out. For me. For Ellie. She’s still young enough. She can forget.
July 14
He threatened me today. Said he'd tell everyone I was unstable. That he'd show them the records. What records? I never consented to anything. If you find this, Ellie—don’t trust him. Don’t trust any of them.
The journal ends there. No final farewell. No explanation. Just a warning.
I clutch the journal against my chest, the dusty air rasping in my lungs. My mother wasn’t crazy. She was trapped. Controlled. Destroyed. By the very people who claimed to love her.
Just like me.
I jam the journal into my tote bag and replace the floorboard, leaving no sign I was here. I have to get out before my father comes back. Before he realizes what I've found. A thousand thoughts charge through my mind, but one screams louder than all the rest:
If they did it to her, they’ll do it to me.
Unless I end this first. My heart hammers against my ribs. I need to leave. Now. Every instinct screams it. But something stops me.
On a low shelf near the closet’s back wall, half-buried under yellowing papers and dusty storage boxes, a small wooden jewelry box with a pearl inlay catches my eye. A strip of metal with tarnished gold lettering curls off the lid, but I can still make out the initials:V.T.
Valeria Thomas.
My mother's jewelry box.
