CHAPTER 4: First Contact
789 Words
I did not sleep.
I lay awake all-night staring at the ceiling, listening to the silence, and jumping at every creak of the house and every shadow that moved. I was terrified.
At sunrise, I heard a knock on my door.
I sat up with my heart pounding and my hands shaking. "Come in."
Damon entered wearing a black shirt and dark pants with his hair slightly wet, looking like he had been awake for hours. His eyes were tired but his face was hard.
"Breakfast," he said.
He did not ask. He just turned and walked away, expecting me to follow.
I followed him to the massive kitchen with white counters, stainless steel appliances, and a man in a chef's coat cooking eggs while the smell of bacon filled the air. My stomach growled.
I sat down at the island.
Damon slid a plate toward me with eggs, toast, fruit, and bacon—it looked perfect.
"Eat," he said.
"I am not hungry."
"I did not ask if you were hungry."
I glared at him, but I picked up the fork and took a bite. The eggs were perfect, and I hated that I liked them.
We ate in silence while he watched me the whole time, like he was waiting for me to do something or studying me.
Finally, he spoke. "Tell me about your childhood."
I stopped chewing. "Why?"
"Because your father hid something and left clues. People like him do not vanish without leaving breadcrumbs, and the breadcrumbs are usually in memories, places, or things he said before he left."
I put my fork down. "He left when I was twelve. He came home one day, hugged my mother, hugged me, said he had to go to work, and never came back. I waited for him for three days, then a week, then a month, and then I stopped waiting."
"Did he leave anything behind? A letter, a note, a suitcase, anything at all."
I shook my head. "Nothing. He just disappeared like he never existed."
"You are lying."
My eyes snapped to his. "I am not."
Damon leaned back in his chair and studied me with sharp eyes that cut through me like knives. "When you are scared, you touch your left ear. When you lie, you look away and touch your nose. You just touched your nose. Twice." I froze.
He noticed everything. He watched me like I was a puzzle he was trying to solve, and he saw every little thing I did.
"Tell me the truth, Amara."
I looked down at my plate with a twisted stomach. I could not lie to him—he would know. "He left me a letter," I whispered. "It came in the mail a week after he vanished. My mother never saw it because I hid it, and I have read it every birthday—a hundred times."
Damon went very still, his eyes focused on me. "What did it say?"
"It said he was sorry, that he loved me, and that if I ever needed him, I should look under the floorboard in my old bedroom closet because there was something there for me. Something important."
Damon stood up immediately. "We are going to your childhood home."
"It is not my home anymore. My mother sold it years ago and moved away. She remarried and has a new life now."
"Who lives there now?"
"I do not know. A family. I do not know their names because I have not been back in years."
Damon pulled out his phone, made a call, said a few words in a low voice, and then hung up.
"I know who lives there, I know the floorplan, and I know the layout. We are going tonight." "Tonight?"
He walked around the island and stopped right in front of me, so close that I had to tilt my head up to look at him. He was tall, intimidating, and his presence filled the whole room. "If the letter is there, we find it. If it is not, you lose your privileges."
"What privileges?"
He smiled that cold smile again. "The privilege of staying in this house instead of a cage."
I felt a shiver run down my spine.
Damon Vale was not a hero or even a villain. He was something worse: a man who had stopped trusting anyone because he had been hurt so badly that he built walls around himself—walls made of ice and steel that no one could break through. I saw the same look in his eyes that I saw in the mirror every morning. We were both afraid of the same thing. We were both terrified of trusting someone who might leave.
- Writer
