Episode2
1534 Words
The message glared up from my screen like it had been waiting all night to ruin me:
You’re not safe anymore.
No name. No number. Just a shadow behind the words. My throat tightened as I stared at it, as if reading it again might help it make sense.
Roman saw my face shift and pulled back, his brow furrowed. “What is it?”
I hesitated, thumb hovering over the screen.
“Nothing,” I lied, clicking the phone off and forcing it into my pocket. “It’s nothing.”
Because the truth was, I didn’t know what it was. And right now, everything hurts too much to care. My mom was gone. My world had fractured. And Roman’s hand was still on the small of my back like he had no intention of letting go.
The air in the waiting room was thick and too bright, everything too loud—the nurse’s shoes squeaking down the hall, a baby crying in another wing, someone yelling two doors down. But the worst sound was the silence in my chest, the hollow where my mother’s voice had been.
Roman sat beside me, elbows on his knees, jaw set in stone. He hadn’t said much since the doctor told us, and somehow that made it worse. Like grief was crawling down the back of my throat and I couldn’t even choke it out loud.
“She had a heart condition,” I whispered, more to myself than to him. “She said it was under control.”
Roman’s gaze flicked to me. “Your mom didn’t collapse from a heart condition, Aurelia.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The doctor said it was internal bleeding. Not cardiac arrest.”
“She could’ve had an ulcer, or—” I shook my head, trying to string logic out of fear. “Why would you say it like that?”
Roman didn’t answer. Just leaned back in the stiff hospital chair, lips pressed into a thin, unreadable line.
“What aren’t you telling me?” I asked, voice trembling.
He looked at me then, properly, and something in his expression made my blood run cold.
“Your mom wasn’t sick. And she wasn’t weak. Whatever happened to her—it wasn’t random.”
I stood, body suddenly too tense to sit still. “You think someone did this to her?”
Roman didn’t flinch. “I think there are things your mother didn’t tell you. And I think we’re not the only ones grieving tonight.”
His words echoed in my head, sharp and wrong.
Before I could ask more, a nurse came by to talk about paperwork. Cremation. Death certificates. All the things I wasn’t ready to hear.
Roman handled most of it. His father had already left the country—business in New York, supposedly—and I was too numb to care. Roman didn’t ask for permission to stay close. He just… did.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
That night, the house was too quiet.
The kind of quiet that screamed.
I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t cry anymore either. My tears had dried somewhere between the hospital exit and our front door. Now there was only the ache, heavy and dull and endless.
I sat on the edge of the bed in my old room, wrapped in a hoodie that didn’t belong to me—it was Roman’s, I realized. I must’ve grabbed it without thinking.
His scent clung to it. Clean, expensive, dangerous.
The phone buzzed again.
I hesitated before checking.
Don’t trust him. He knows what happened.
I stared at the screen, a chill crawling up my spine.
No name. No number. Just dread in text form.
I didn’t tell Roman.
Not yet.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
The funeral was small. Too small.
I wore black and didn’t speak, not even when someone from my mom’s old law firm tried to hug me and tell me she was “an incredible woman.” Like that meant anything now. Like those words could fix the gaping hole inside my chest.
Roman stood beside me the whole time. Not touching, not talking. Just… there.
I hated how much I noticed his presence. How it grounded me and unbalanced me all at once. How the people at the funeral whispered, probably wondering why her daughter’s step-son looked like her protector and her temptation all at once.
I didn’t care.
Until I saw him.
Standing by the tree line, half in shadow. A man in a charcoal suit. Watching.
My breath caught.
Roman noticed instantly. “What is it?”
I blinked, and the man was gone.
“Nothing,” I whispered again.
Lie number two.
Roman didn’t believe it. I could feel it in the way he tensed.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
Later that night, I sat on the back patio alone. Stars stretched above me like a sky full of promises I didn’t believe in anymore.
Roman appeared, two glasses in his hands. Whiskey. He didn’t ask if I wanted one.
He just handed it to me.
“You’re not okay,” he said softly.
“No shit.”
He nodded, taking a slow sip. “You’re hiding something.”
“So are you.”
He didn’t argue.
I didn’t either.
Silence stretched between us again, but this time it felt like something might crack under it.
“I keep thinking about the last thing she said to me,” I whispered, voice raw. “She told me I needed to stop pretending. That I was too much like her. Those secrets were in my blood.”
Roman didn’t say anything, but he turned toward me fully, like he was bracing for whatever I’d say next.
“She was right,” I said. “About all of it.”
“Secrets keep people alive, Aurelia.”
“And they kill them too,” I shot back.
He didn’t flinch.
He just looked at me with those dark, steady eyes that always seemed to know more than he let on.
“I think she was afraid,” I whispered. “Of something. Or someone.”
“Yeah,” Roman said, voice low. “Me too.”
I turned to face him. “You knew her before all this. Before the wedding. Right?”
Roman exhaled, slowly. “Yes.”
“How?”
He looked away, jaw tightening. “It’s complicated.”
“I can handle complicated things.”
He hesitated, then finally said, “She used to work for my father.”
My blood went cold. “What do you mean?”
“She helped cover for him. Legal stuff. Private deals. Nothing in the books.”
My stomach twisted. “Are you saying she was involved in something illegal?”
“I’m saying she was involved in something dangerous.”
I stood, chest tightening. “Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
“Because I didn’t think it mattered,” Roman said, rising too. “Not until now.”
“And now?”
He stepped closer. “Now I think someone doesn’t want her secrets getting out.”
I shook my head. “That’s crazy.”
“No,” he said. “It’s real.”
He reached into his pocket and handed me something. A small flash drive.
“She gave me this a week ago. Told me not to open it unless something happened to her.”
I stared at it like it might explode.
“Why would she give it to you?”
Roman’s voice was rough. “Because she didn’t trust anyone else.”
A thousand thoughts collided in my head. None of them are good.
“I need to know what’s on it,” I whispered.
“I have already checked,” he said. It’s encrypted. I’m working on unlocking it.”
I pressed the heel of my hand against my forehead. “So someone killed her to keep this buried?”
Roman’s silence said everything.
I sat back down, suddenly exhausted. “And now what?”
“Now we stay quiet,” he said. “We figure out who’s behind it. And we don’t trust anyone.”
He hesitated before adding, “Not even my father.”
The weight of it all sank into my bones.
We were in too deep.
And I didn’t even know how far it went.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
Later that night, I woke up to a sound.
Not the ocean. Not the wind.
Glass.
Shattering.
I slipped out of bed, heart hammering. The hallway was dark. Too dark.
Roman was already up, moving like a shadow down the hall, shirtless, barefoot, holding something metallic.
“Stay here,” he mouthed.
I followed him anyway.
We found the living room window smashed, glass glittering across the floor like ice. But that wasn’t the worst part.
The worst part was what was taped to the wall above the fireplace.
One of my mother’s photos—torn in half. Her face slashed through.
And below it, written in thick red marker:
YOU’RE NEXT.
—---------------------—-----------------------------
Roman turned to me, face stone-cold. “We need to leave. Tonight. You’re not safe here anymore.”
- Writer
