Fell For The Wrong Billionaire

Chapter 10: The Fire Between Secrets

I don't remember sitting down. One second I was standing in the closet doorway, staring at the empty space in the box, and the next I was on the floor of my bedroom with the box in my lap, turning it upside down like the journal might have slipped beneath the photographs, the letters, the jewelry, might still be here if I just looked hard enough.

It wasn't.

"Talia." Kairo crouched in front of me, gun still in his hand, forgotten. "Look at me."

"It was right here." My own voice sounded far away. "I put it right here after the funeral. I didn't even open it. I wasn't ready, and I thought there'd be time, and now…"

"We'll find it."

"You don't know that."

"Maybe," he said. "I don't."

That honesty, of all things, was what broke me. Not the theft. Not the open door or the disturbed closet or the men circling the cabin. The fact that he wouldn't lie to make me feel better, even now, when a lie would have cost him nothing.

I pressed the heel of my hand against my eyes. "It was the last thing of hers I hadn't read. As long as it stayed closed, some part of her was still…" I stopped. Swallowed. "Still mine to get to eventually. And now someone else has read it before I ever did."

"This is my fault."

I looked up at that.

"I should never have left the cabin," he said. "I knew the moment I saw that photograph, and I still walked out that door and left you here alone."

"You didn't take the journal, Kairo."

"I left you unprotected because I couldn't sit still with what I was feeling. That's the same thing."

"It's not." Sharper than I meant it. Something crossed his face, small and quick, gone before I could be sure I'd seen it. "You don't get to carry this too. I heard you slam that door and I panicked and I went running into the woods after you like an i***t, and while I was out there proving I could survive on my own, somebody walked into my house and took the one thing I actually cared about protecting."

"You went looking for me because you thought I was hurt."

"I know why I did it."

"Then you understand why I'm not going to pretend I had no part in this."

We stared at each other across the wreckage of Mara's box, both of us apparently determined to be the one who'd failed worse, and something about the absurdity of it loosened my shoulders an inch.

"We could do this all night," I said. "Take turns."

"We could."

"Or we could try to remember what was actually in it."

He nodded slowly. He could work a problem. I was starting to understand that about him. Feelings he had to be dragged into. A problem, he'd run toward.

We sat on the floor of my bedroom, knees nearly touching, and I tried to remember everything I could about that journal without ever having opened it. The cover, worn brown leather, a strap that no longer buckled properly. The weight of it, heavier than it should have been for its size, like the pages inside had been added to over years rather than written in one sitting.

"She used to say things," I said slowly. "Little warnings. I always thought they were just… Mara being Mara."

"What kind of warnings?"

"She told me never to throw out the music box. The one in the attic." I chased the memory further back than I usually let myself go. "I asked her why once, when I was… maybe sixteen, cleaning out old boxes for a garage sale I never actually had. She grabbed it out of my hands so fast she nearly dropped it. Told me some things aren't for selling. Wouldn't say anything else."

"Where is it now?" He asked.

"Still in the attic. I never could bring myself to get rid of it. Or open it, really. I always assumed it was just… sentimental."

"Show me."

The attic access was in the hallway ceiling, a pull-string I hadn't touched in over a year. Kairo went up first, not because I asked him to but because he was already climbing before I'd finished reaching for the flashlight. The cold up there was sharper than downstairs, our breath fogging in the beam of light as he swept it across boxes I'd half forgotten I owned.

The music box sat exactly where I remembered it, tucked behind an old trunk, dust thick enough to hold the shape of where a hand had once set it down and never picked it up again. Kairo lifted it with a care that surprised me, turning it over slowly, running his thumb along a seam in the wood I hadn't ever noticed.

"It's heavier than it should be."

"Yeah."

He found the catch on the underside — not the lid, but a second, smaller compartment built into the base, disguised as decorative trim until you knew exactly where to press. It clicked open under his thumb like it had been waiting years for someone to remember it existed.

Inside, nestled in a bed of faded velvet, was not a key.

Not a letter.

But a small brass cylinder, no longer than my finger, its surface worn smooth in places like it had been handled often, once, a long time ago, and then never touched again.

"What is that?"

Kairo turned it slowly in the flashlight beam. Recognition, flashed through his eyes.

"A recorder. An old one. Analog." His thumb found a nearly invisible seam along its length. "These were used for exactly one reason twenty years ago. Insurance. Something you record and hide when you don't trust anyone left standing to protect you if the truth ever needs telling."

"Mara had this."

"Mara hid this."

The distinction landed between us like something with weight of its own.

"We need to hear what's on it."

"We will." He was already moving toward the attic stairs, the cylinder closed carefully in his palm. "Not up here. I don't want to be exposed if…"

He stopped.

Downstairs, faint through the floorboards, I heard it too.

An engine. Then another. Then a third, tires crunching slow and deliberate over packed snow, headlights sweeping pale across the ceiling of the front room below us in a way that meant they weren't approaching the cabin.

They were surrounding it.

"Let’s head down. Now." All the warmth had gone out of Kairo's voice, replaced by a focus so total it frightened me more than the lights outside had. He was already moving, cylinder pocketed, pulling me toward the attic stairs.

We came down into the front room in time to see the lights sweep past the windows a second time, slower now.

"They're not being careful this time."

"No."

"The others were quiet."

"This is a different kind of visit." He crossed to the window, staying low, angling himself so he could see the driveway without standing in front of the glass. "Get away from the windows."

I did, my pulse loud in my ears. I watched him check the front door, the back, moving with a speed and precision I recognized now from the clearing, from the way he'd put that man on the ground without a wasted motion. Those were the same hands that had cleaned the chisel cut on my palm two nights ago, careful and unhurried. There was nothing unhurried about them now.

Then he set the gun down.

On the kitchen table, between us, deliberately, like the decision cost him something to make.

"What are you doing?"

"If they get inside." He said it evenly, "Don't save me."

I stared at him. "Why would you say that?"

"Because if they realize who you are…"

He stopped.

Too late. The words were already out, already hanging in the air, already impossible to pull back.

"Who am I?"

He didn't answer. His eyes stayed fixed on mine, and for the first time since I'd found him bleeding in my headlights, I watched him search for words and come up with nothing. Not a half-truth. Not a careful evasion dressed up as an answer. Nothing at all.

"Kairo." My voice had gone very quiet. "Who am I?"

He closed his eyes.

And in the silence that followed, the cabin lights, dead for two days, dark since the storm first took the power, flared suddenly back to life around us, every lamp in the front room blazing on at once. Somewhere down the mountain, a line crew had finally reached whatever pole had come down. The furnace kicked on with a groan. The refrigerator hummed back to life in the kitchen.

Neither of us moved.

Then, from the drawer beside the stove, something began to ring.

Not my phone. My phone had been dead in my coat pocket for two days, and even charged, it never rang like that, a short, old-fashioned double note I didn't recognize at all.

Kairo crossed the kitchen before I'd fully understood he'd moved, yanked the drawer open, and stopped, hand still on the handle.

A phone sat inside. Small, plain, a model I didn't recognize, its charging cable coiled beside it and plugged into the wall outlet behind the drawer — plugged in the whole time, silently drawing power the moment the lines came back, waiting.

It hadn't been dead at all. It had been off the grid with the rest of the cabin, charging in the dark, and now it was very much alive.

"That's not mine. I've never seen that before in my life."

Kairo didn't answer. He was staring down at the screen like it had reached out and touched him.

"Kairo. Is it yours?"

"Yes, it’s mine." He said it finally, eyes still on the screen. "I put it there the first night. In case I needed a way out that didn't run through your line, in case someone was watching your calls. Only one person has this number."

I had never seen him look shaken. Not in the clearing, not with a knife spinning past his head, not with a man convulsing to death under his hands. He looked afraid now, standing in my kitchen, watching a phone ring in a drawer like it might reach out and take something from him just by continuing to ring.

"Then answer it."

"I haven't heard that voice in twenty years."

The phone kept ringing.