UNLEASHED: THE HIDDEN CURSE

Chapter 4: The Jurisdiction

The man in front of me didn’t move, didn’t speak. His shoulders tightened almost imperceptibly, a tiny shift that told me he knew the situation had changed—and not in his favor.

Slowly, he turned.

I followed his gaze, my fingers locked so tightly around the blue box that my knuckles burned. For a second, all I could see was the rectangle of the attic opening, pale light from the hallway below spilling onto the ladder.

Then a figure appeared.

A pair of hands first—steady, unhurried—gripping the ladder’s sides. Then the top of a head, dark curls escaping a loose tie. A face rose into view, framed by the attic’s edge: sharp cheekbones, tired eyes, and a focus so intense it cut straight through the shadows.

A woman.

She climbed the last steps like she’d done it plenty of times before, like this attic was not foreign ground to her. Her boots made a soft, hollow sound on the boards. She didn’t look at me at first. Her gaze was locked on the man who’d been reaching for me just moments before.

“Elias,” she said.

The way she said his name was so controlled it made the hairs on my arms stand up. There was history packed into those three syllables—resentment, warning, and something that sounded a lot like exhaustion.

The man—Elias—didn’t flinch, but I saw his jaw tighten.

“Leah,” he replied, giving her a small nod, as though they’d just run into each other at a supermarket instead of in a dead woman’s attic over a box of secrets.

So they knew each other.

Great.

Because this wasn’t terrifying enough already.

Leah’s eyes finally flicked to me. Just a glance, brief and assessing, but it was enough for me to see a difference between them. Where Elias’s gaze had been calculating, hers was sharp but… gentler. Alert, but not predatory.

“Are you okay?” she asked me.

No one had asked me that and meant it in days.

My throat went tight. I didn’t trust my voice, so I just nodded, even though I wasn’t sure it was true.

Elias shifted his weight, drawing her attention back.

“This is not your jurisdiction,” he said quietly.

Leah actually laughed. It was short, humorless.

“You broke into the house of a recently deceased woman to take something from her son,” she said. “You think anyone cares about jurisdiction at this point?”

Her eyes drifted down to his hands—empty now, but still too close to me for comfort.

“Step away from him,” she repeated.

He gave her a long, measuring look. For a second, I thought he’d refuse. He had the edge in size, in position, in experience—that much was obvious even to me. But there was something about Leah that didn’t invite testing. She had the quiet confidence of someone who’d come prepared.

Slowly, Elias took a single step back.

Just one.

It changed everything.

My lungs remembered how to work. The attic seemed to expand a little, no longer pressing me into the beam. Leah didn’t come closer yet, though. She kept both of us in her line of sight like she wasn’t entirely sure which one of us might panic first.

“Daniel,” she said carefully, “I know you have no reason to trust me right now. But you cannot give him that box.”

Elias’s voice grew colder. “You don’t know what’s in it.”

“Oh, I have a pretty good idea,” she snapped. “That’s why I’m here.”

My head swam.

“You—” I croaked, my voice finally surfacing. “You both knew my mother?”

Leah’s gaze softened, just a fraction. “Yes,” she said. “In different ways.”

That was not the comforting answer I’d been hoping for.

“And you just… what?” I continued, words tumbling out faster than my sense could filter them. “Decided to show up here, climb into my attic, and fight over a box in front of me like this is normal?”

Leah winced slightly, as if to say, fair point. “None of this is normal,” she admitted. “But your mother… she knew a day like this might come. She wanted someone here when you found what she left behind.”

Elias snorted. “I doubt she meant you.”

“Funny,” Leah shot back. “I was thinking the same about you.” They glared at each other across the attic, two storms clashing in a too-small sky, with me stuck somewhere in the middle clutching a box like a lifeline.

I swallowed hard.

“What’s in it?” I asked, looking from one to the other. “What’s so important that you break into my house, climb into my attic, and act like I’m holding a bomb?”

Neither answered immediately.