Scarlett’s POV
The light from my flashlight quivered as I stepped deeper into the photo room.
Each creak of the old floorboards beneath me sounded like a gunshot in the silence. The air was dry, dense with the scent of age and secrets, thick enough to swallow breath.
I moved slowly toward the wall of photos.
They were pinned edge to edge, overlapping like leaves pressed into a book. And almost every single one of them featured… me.
Some I didn’t even remember being taken.
One showed me at maybe six or seven, in a denim jacket and pink sneakers, walking beside Emanuela. I wasn’t looking at the camera. I wasn’t smiling. I was mid-step, distracted by something to my right.
Another, older, captured me asleep in the back seat of a car. A book open on my lap. Lips slightly parted. Complet
