UNLEASHED: THE HIDDEN CURSE

Chapter 5: My Past

Leah’s jaw worked, like she was chewing on words she didn’t want to say. Elias watched her, waiting. It was clear he wanted her to be the one to explain. Whatever was in this box, he wasn’t the confiding type.

“It’s about your past,” Leah finally said, her voice softer. “About your mother. And about the people who wanted to make sure you never saw any of this.”

My grip tightened.

“My past?” I repeated. “You mean the part where apparently my mother adopted me and never told me?”

Leah blinked.

Elias’s eyes sharpened.

“You read something,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

I nodded stiffly. “Enough.”

Leah’s shoulders slumped slightly, like some invisible clock had just ticked to zero.

“Then we’re out of time,” she murmured.

Something in her tone made my stomach drop.

“Out of time for what?” I asked.

Elias stepped forward again, and Leah immediately turned toward him, her hand sliding casually—too casually—to the inside of her jacket. He froze mid-step.

My brain supplied possibilities I didn’t particularly like—badge, g*n, some kind of ID, a threat she could back up. I had no idea who she was, but whatever she carried there, Elias respected it.

Or feared it.

“We shouldn’t be having this conversation here,” Elias said. “He’s exposed.”

My chest tightened. “Exposed to what?”

Leah didn’t look away from Elias as she answered. “To the same people who wanted his mother quiet.”

The world shifted under my feet.

I’d been teetering on the edge of something all morning—grief, confusion, the slow tilt of reality as I discovered things about my life that should’ve been impossible. But this pushed me over.

“You think her death wasn’t an accident,” I whispered.

I’d barely let myself think the words, let alone say them out loud.

Silence followed. Heavy. Dense.

Leah’s expression told me everything I needed to know.

“I think your mother made enemies,” she said. “And I think those enemies don’t like loose ends.”

Loose ends.

I stared down at the blue box in my arms. It suddenly felt heavier, like the letters and photograph inside had turned to stone.

“Why me?” I whispered. It wasn’t an accusation—just a small, tired question I hadn’t been able to form until now. “I’m nobody. I go to work, I come home, I… existed. That’s it. Why am I suddenly a problem?”

Elias spoke before Leah could.

“Because of who you are,” he said quietly. “And who you belong to.”

The words landed like a blow.

I shook my head, the denial instinctive.

“I belong to my mother,” I said. “That’s it.”

Elias looked at me with something almost like pity.

“If only it were that simple,” he murmured.

Something hot flared in my chest—anger, sharp enough to cut through the fog of grief and fear.

“I don’t know either of you,” I said, forcing my voice to hold steady. “You show up in my house uninvited and talk in half-sentences like characters in some bad thriller, and I’m just supposed to trust you? No. No. If you want me to listen, you stop speaking in riddles and you tell me the truth. All of it. Now.”

Leah and Elias exchanged a look.

I hated that.

I hated the silent communication, the shared history, the fact that they knew more about my life than I did

Leah took a slow breath.

“Your mother asked me to look out for you if anything happened to her,” she said. “She didn’t give me details. She didn’t tell me everything. But she told me enough to know you’d be in danger once you found that box.”

“So her solution,” I said, my voice edging toward hysteria, “was to leave the box anyway and trust that two strangers would show up to fight over it in my attic?”

“It’s more complicated than that,” Elias muttered.

I laughed. It sounded wrong in my own ears—too sharp, too humorless.

“Of course it is,” I said.

Leah flinched. She stepped closer, slowly, keeping her hands where I could see them. Her voice dropped.

“Daniel, I can’t make you trust us,” she said. “You have every right to be angry. To be scared. To demand answers. But right now, the most important thing is that you and that box get out of this house. Conversations can happen later. If we stay here, we invite attention you are not ready for.”

I opened my mouth to argue—to remind her this was my home, my mother’s home, the last place in the world I still recognized—but something stopped me.

A noise from outside.

Distant, but distinct.

The crunch of tires on gravel.

Leah heard it too. Her eyes snapped toward the tiny attic window. Elias had already moved, his body angling like he was listening to a frequency I couldn’t hear.

The house, once merely quiet, now felt like it was waiting.

“What’s that?” I whispered.

Leah didn’t answer right away. She took two quick steps toward the window, peering through the dusty glass. Her shoulders went rigid.

“Too late,” she breathed.

Elias swore under his breath.

My stomach dropped. “Too late for what?”

Leah turned back to me, eyes blazing with urgency I hadn’t seen before.

“To leave quietly,” she said. “They’re here.”

“Who?” The word came out thin, fragile.

She didn’t hesitate.

“The people who made sure your mother never told you the truth.”

“And if they find you with that box,” Elias added grimly, “they won’t make the same mistake twice.”