Secret In The East Wing
1013 Words
đź“– Chapter 15: Secrets in the East Wing
The mansion was quiet again that night, the kind of heavy silence Lena was starting to recognize as deliberate. Every footstep she took down the carpeted hall felt muffled, every door she passed seemed to hum with secrets she wasn’t meant to hear.
But tonight, she wasn’t here to tiptoe around them.
She was here to find answers.
---
It had been hours since her encounter with Victoria in Damon’s office, but Lena could still feel the sting of the woman’s words. The polished condescension. The little barbs dressed as compliments. But more than that, she could feel the tension in Damon himself, the way his voice had cracked just slightly when he told her to stay.
It had left her with more questions than she could bear.
So when midnight came, she dressed quietly in dark leggings and a thin sweater and slipped into the hall barefoot.
The East Wing. That was where the answers lived.
---
The wing was colder than the rest of the house, its windows older, its walls lined with family portraits that seemed to watch her as she passed. Here and there a vase or a sculpture glimmered in the faint moonlight spilling through the tall windows, throwing long, warped shadows across the marble.
She kept to the edge of the corridor, her fingers grazing the wall for balance, and stopped at the last door on the left.
The one she’d seen him standing in weeks ago.
She hesitated, then turned the handle.
It opened without protest.
---
Inside, the air was cooler still, carrying a faint, sweet scent she couldn’t quite place. Lavender, maybe. Or something older.
The room wasn’t large. A few chairs draped in white cloth stood in the corner, and a piano, its keys faintly yellowed, sat beneath a window.
And against the far wall: a small, glass-fronted cabinet.
She approached slowly, her reflection catching faintly in the glass.
Inside, rows of neatly arranged items — photographs, trinkets, letters stacked and tied with ribbon. All of it carefully preserved.
Her heart thudded as she reached for the latch.
The glass swung open with a faint creak.
---
The first thing she touched was a framed photograph.
Vivian. She recognized her from the photos in the study. But younger here, her smile wide and unguarded, her arms thrown around another woman’s shoulders.
Amelia.
Lena didn’t need to see the faint scrawl on the back of the frame to know it.
They looked like sisters, though she knew they weren’t.
Or maybe they were, in all the ways that counted.
Lena set the photo down gently and reached for the stack of letters next.
Her fingers trembled as she untied the ribbon and opened the first envelope.
---
> My dearest Vivian,
I keep thinking about what you said. About leaving. About how much it would hurt him. You’re right. It would. But maybe that’s the only way to save him from himself.
He doesn’t see it yet, but every time he locks someone out, he’s locking something inside, too. I can see it in his eyes now, the way he carries the weight of us like a punishment instead of a gift.
I don’t want him to hate me when I go. But I can’t stay and watch him become someone he’s not.
Take care of him, Vivian. Please. Take care of him when I can’t.
Always,
A.
---
Lena stared at the letter long after she finished reading it, her chest tight.
It wasn’t just grief that lived here in this room.
It was guilt.
---
The sound of a floorboard creaking behind her made her whirl.
Her eyes met his instantly.
Damon stood in the doorway, one shoulder resting against the frame, his arms crossed over his chest.
He didn’t speak.
Didn’t move.
Just stood there, his eyes unreadable as they swept over her, then the open cabinet, then the letter still trembling slightly in her hand.
---
Lena swallowed hard and forced herself to meet his gaze.
“You kept it all,” she said softly.
Still, he didn’t answer.
Her fingers tightened around the letter. “Why?”
He exhaled, a quiet, humorless sound.
“Because I deserve to remember.”
---
She set the letter back on the stack carefully, her hands lingering as though it might vanish if she let go too soon.
Then she straightened, crossing her arms as she turned to face him fully.
“You loved her,” she said.
It wasn’t quite a question.
But he answered anyway.
“Yes.”
“And you lost her.”
“Yes.”
“And you think punishing yourself for it makes you better somehow?”
That pulled something sharp from him — his jaw tightened, and his voice came out rougher now.
“You don’t know what I did,” he said.
“Then tell me,” she shot back.
His eyes burned into hers.
But he didn’t.
Of course he didn’t.
---
Instead, he stepped further into the room and closed the glass door of the cabinet, his fingers lingering on the latch.
“This is the one place in this house that still feels like hers,” he murmured finally.
Then he looked up at her, his expression so guarded it might as well have been another wall.
“Don’t come here again.”
---
Lena stared at him, her heart still hammering against her ribs.
But she didn’t argue.
Not yet.
Instead, she turned and left the room without another word, her bare feet silent against the marble.
---
Later that night, back in her suite, she sat at her writing desk with her journal open in front of her.
Her hand hovered over the page for a long time before she finally wrote:
He loved her. He lost her. But the worst thing is… he still loves her more than he’ll ever love me.
Her pen hesitated.
Then she added one last line.
And I don’t know why that doesn’t make me walk away.
- Writer
