It’s from their mother. A warning from the grave, a plea from a woman who knew she was going to die. A wave of nausea and a profound, aching sadness for the boys in the photograph washes over me. This isn't just rage he carries; it's a promise to his mother that he failed to keep.
My fingers brush against something hard and metallic at the bottom of the box. It’s a small, old digital voice recorder. It looks ancient. I press the power button, not expecting it to work. The small screen flickers to life, showing a single saved file.
My heart pounding, I press play.
A ghost of a voice fills the silent loft. It’s young, confident, and laced with the same rough timbre as Cassian’s. It’s Leo.
"Hey, Cass, it's me. Pick up. Look, I know you're pissed I took the car, but you should see this thing fly. It's a beast. I'm telling you, nothing on the road can touch it. I'm gonna show Dad what real driving is—"
The voice cuts off for a second, muffled by the sound of a roaring engine and loud music. He’s not talking to Cassian anymore, but to someone beside him. His voice is distant, cocky."Check out that little yellow convertible at the light. Think we should give 'em a show?"
Then, another sound emerges. A sound that stops my heart. It’s a bright, bubbling, fearless laugh, captured for a fraction of a second from an open window.
It’s Jade.
She wasn’t in his car. She was in ours. Sitting beside me. He must have pulled up next to us. That laugh… I remember that laugh. It was the last sound she ever made. She was laughing at the song on the radio.
Leo’s voice comes back on the line, chuckling to himself."Nah, they're not worth the gas. Anyway, man, I'll call you later. We're gonna be legends."
The recording ends.
The world dissolves, and the recorder slips from my numb fingers. I am listening to the last moments of their lives. His arrogance. Her innocence. A final, happy artifact from a world that no longer exists. He was showing off. We were just… there. The grief is a physical force, a tidal wave that crashes over me. Stealing the air from my lungs, blurring my vision with hot, silent tears. Cassian didn't just lose his brother. He has been carrying the ghost of my sister, too.
It takes a full minute for me to be able to breathe again. My body is wracked with silent, shuddering sobs. This is the heart of the nightmare. This is the shared, tangled root of our pain.
Finally, my trembling fingers find the last item in the box. A thick, official-looking document, folded in thirds. I pull it out, my tears spotting the paper.
It’s a marriage certificate.
My eyes scan the names, my mind struggling to process what I’m seeing through the blur.
Groom:Dimitri Kostas.
Bride:Caroline Miller.
Caroline. Miller.
My mother’s name.
The world tilts on its axis. The grief is instantly burned away by a white-hot shock that is somehow even more painful. It can’t be. It’s a mistake. A different Caroline Miller. It has to be.
But then I see the date, printed in crisp, black ink. Six months ago.
My estranged mother, the woman who abandoned me after Jade’s death, the woman I haven’t spoken to in almost two years… married Cassian’s father.
She married the father of the boy whose recklessness killed her other daughter.
The thought is so monstrous, so grotesquely twisted, it doesn’t seem real. This isn’t about grief, this isn’t about a tragic, random accident. This is about family. My family. His family. Entangled in some sick, dark web of secrets and lies that stretches back long before the crash.
Cassian didn’t just stumble into my life. He’s not just my captor.
He’s my stepbrother.
Ding.
The sound is soft, almost gentle, but it slices through the silence of the loft like a scream.
The elevator.
