10:59:This isn’t funny, Cal. Seriously. Please just tell me you went down to the beach for some air??
11:02:Okay I’m really getting scared now. PLEASE ANSWER!!!
I clicked into the next message thread from the contact saved as ‘J’.
11:01:Hey Cal,where are you? Cherry told me you left the room? Where did you go?
11:04:She said you’re still not back and she’s really worried. I am too. This better not be part of one of those prank videos you guys are always working on… omg girl I will totally kill you if it is…
11:12:Seriously Cal where the hell are you???Are you okay??
There were no other message threads in the inbox. Just multiple missed calls from the four saved contacts: C, J, D, and G, which were obviously Cherry, Jeremiah, Dylan, and Ginny.
There was nothing else on the phone that could possibly relate to Roman Valcourt. No calls to or from unsaved numbers, no photos, no deleted messages in the trash.
With a sigh, I put the burner away and turned my attention to Calista’s main phone. I went through everything for what felt like the millionth time—contacts, messages on different apps, emails, call log—but there was no mention of Roman Valcourt’s name anywhere on the device. Not even a contact saved simply as ‘R’. There was zero evidence that she’d even known the guy, let alone been in a secret relationship with him.
Once I’d checked everything text-related, I went into the phone’s photo gallery, wondering if there was anything useful in there. Calista had always loved documenting everything in photos, so the gallery was packed with hundreds of albums, all named and sorted by event or location.
Perhaps she’d hidden something about Roman in one of the albums. But… which one? Where would I even begin to look when there were so damn many?
I was about to start the painstakingly slow process of going through each album one by one when something caught my eye. Something I must’ve seen a hundred times before but had never really noticed until now.
Last year, Calista had done a six-week-long Euro-trip with a couple of her best friends from high school. The three of them had spent a huge portion of their time in Italy, so there were multiple albums with titles like ‘Rome’, ‘Milan’, ‘Florence’, ‘Cinque Terre’ and so on. But now I’d noticed there was a little more to that section of the gallery.
Right between the ‘Rome’ and ‘Florence’ albums, there was another album called ‘Roman Holiday’ with an image of the Colosseum as the cover photo.
When I’d scrolled through all the albums in the past, I’d assumed that Calista had simply made an extra album for her Rome photos because she’d taken so many, and the Colosseum cover photo seemed to confirm that. But I knew it was possible to setanyphoto as a cover image, even if it wasn’t relevant to the photos within the album itself. So perhaps she'd used the Colosseum photo as camouflage, hiding photos of Roman Valcourt amongst all the Italy pictures.
With my heart thudding, I tapped on the ‘Roman Holiday’ album to enter it.
I was right. It wasn't Rome at all.
The first photo was of Calista, standing on a rocky coastline with the wind whipping her blonde hair across her face. She was laughing, one hand reaching up to catch the strands, the other clutching a takeout coffee. Behind her, gray-blue water stretched to the horizon, dotted with lobster boats and pine-covered islands.
I knew that coastline. It was Bar Harbor, up in Maine. Calista and I had gone there on vacation with our aunt and uncle whenwe were kids, and we’d both absolutely loved it and sworn we’d go back one day.
I swiped to the next photo, and my breath caught in my throat.
Roman Valcourt stood beside my sister, his arm around her waist, pulling her close. She was looking up at him with an expression I hadn't seen on her face in years; one of pure, unguarded joy.
This confirmed it. Calista and Roman were indeed involved with each other.
I swiped again to see a selfie of Calista sitting on a dock, her legs dangling over the edge. Roman was behind her with his arms wrapped around her shoulders, squinting against the sun.
Another swipe.
The two of them were at a seafood shack in the next photo, sharing a lobster roll. Cal had butter on her chin and Roman was reaching over with a napkin, lips curved in that signature Valcourt smirk.
Another.
This one was a selfie Cal had taken in what looked like a cozy bed-and-breakfast room. Roman was asleep beside her, one arm flung over his face, completely unaware he was being photographed. Cal's expression in that photo was so tender it made my chest ache.
I kept swiping, photo after photo. In every single image, my sister looked happy. Radiant. Alive.
She obviously had no idea.
No idea that getting involved with a Valcourt would put a target on her back. No idea that the man she was falling for belonged to a family that controlled a secret society capable of making people disappear. No idea that only a month after these photos were taken, she'd be dead.
