I woke to silence. Not the peaceful kind of silence that blankets a home at night, but the kind that carries a warning—a vacuum of sound that presses against your ears and makes your chest ache. Something was wrong.
At first, I thought it was the girls. But then I realized their rooms were empty. My heart stopped.
I bolted upright in bed, heart hammering, every muscle tense. The room was dark, moonlight seeping in through the curtains. Lucian’s side of the bed was empty. My father wasn’t there either. Confusion mingled with fear in a way I couldn’t name. And then I heard it: the low, deliberate click of a lock turning.
The door to my room swung open slowly.
He was there.
The villain. The man who had haunted the shadows of my childhood, the one who had been waiting all these years for
