Alpha Luna Diary: My Personal Obsession

CHAPTER 21: My Father's Last Lie

Open this diary only if you have ever believed you knew someone completely, only to discover their entire life was built on a secret.

Dear Diary... tonight, one sentence shattered the memory of the man I called Father. If he was not taken from me by an accident, then who spent seventeen years making sure I never asked why?

The library stayed completely silent after the guard delivered the stranger’s message. “Do not open your mother’s letter until you know who killed your father.”

The words seemed to hang in the air long after they had been spoken. My fingers loosened around the unopened envelope without my permission, and it slipped out of my hand, landing softly on the polished table. My heartbeat pounded in my ears loud enough to drown out everything else.

I could not breathe. No — I refused to breathe, like holding still might undo what I had just heard.

My father died in a traffic accident when I was ten. That was what everyone had always told me. My mother cried for weeks. Neighbors brought food. There was a funeral, with flowers and a photograph and everyone telling me how sorry they were, how young I was, how unfair it all was. I had built my entire understanding of my own childhood around that single, simple story.

How could that have been a lie this whole time? “Marionette,” Jack said, gentle, stepping closer but careful not to startle me. “You do not have to believe the words of a stranger. Someone might just be trying to confuse you.”

I wanted to believe him. I really did. But something in me had already started doubting everything I thought I knew. I looked at Rowan instead. “You knew my parents,” I whispered. “Tell me honestly — was my father’s death really an accident?”

Rowan lowered his eyes, and the silence that followed scared me more than any answer could have. “Rowan,” Arthur said, firm. “This is not the time.”

“No,” I cut in, my voice shaking. “It is exactly the time.” Everyone turned to look at me.

“I have spent my whole life accepting whatever people decided I should be allowed to know,” I said, tears gathering despite my best effort to hold them back. “First my diary. Then my childhood. Then the Sanctuary. Then the war. Every single answer has only proven that somebody has been lying to me the entire time.”

I looked straight at Rowan. “I do not want another lie.” He took a slow breath. “When your father died,” he said, “I was not there.” Hope flickered in my chest. “But?” he added. “I arrived two hours later.”

The hope died just as fast. “What did you see?” I asked reluctantly. Rowan crossed his arms, digging through memory. “The official report described a collision caused by brake failure.”

“That is what my mother told me too,” I said. “But I never believed the report,” he said, quieter now. The room went still. Max frowned confused, “Why not?”

Rowan walked to one of the windows before answering. “Because your father was not a careless driver,” he said, turning back to face us. “He repaired his own car every weekend.” Arthur nodded slowly. “That is true.”

“He inspected every part himself before ever driving anywhere,” Rowan said. “A man like that does not just suddenly forget how his own brakes work.”

A cold shiver ran down my spine. Gabriel leaned in. “So you suspected sabotage,” he said. “I suspected somebody wanted his death to look ordinary,” Rowan said.

My knees went weak. Jack pulled a chair over instantly. “Sit down,” he said, gentle, and I obeyed without arguing, everything suddenly too heavy to stand under.

Jack knelt beside me instead of taking his own seat back. “You do not have to carry all of this by yourself,” he murmured, close enough that I could feel the warmth of him even through the chill still sitting in my chest.

His words nearly broke me open. I smiled weakly. “I am trying not to fall apart,” I said. “You do not have to pretend you are okay,” he said, trying to put me at ease. “I have always pretended,” I admitted to him.

His eyes softened in a way that made something in my stomach flip despite everything falling apart around us. “Then stop pretending,” he said. “At least with me.”

For a few seconds neither of us said anything else. His quiet presence beside me did more for my racing pulse than any comforting words could have, and I hated how much I noticed the exact distance between his hand and mine on the arm of the chair, how badly some small, stubborn part of me wanted to close it. It felt wrong, almost, to notice something like that in the middle of learning my father might have been murdered — and yet I could not make myself stop noticing it either.

Gabriel cleared his throat, watching the two of us a beat too long before speaking. “As much as I hate interrupting,” he said, “something is bothering me.”

“The stranger,” Arthur said. “He knew about the letter,” Gabriel said, nodding at the envelope on the table. “Nobody outside this room should even know it exists.”

“You are right,” Arthur said, his face darkening. “And he knew exactly what message would stop Marionette from opening it,” Gabriel added.

The realization spread through the room. Whoever the stranger was, he knew far too much. Arthur turned to the guard. “Bring him inside.” The guard shifted, uncomfortable. “Sir… he is gone. We searched the whole estate. No vehicle. No footprints. No camera recorded anyone entering or leaving.”

The room went strangely quiet. “That is impossible,” Gabriel said furious and angry. “Check the cameras again,” Arthur told the head of security. “We already have,” the guard said. “They are blank.” Jack stood. “Blank how?”

“They worked normally until exactly 9:17,” the guard said. “Then nothing. Six minutes of nothing.”

“Six missing minutes,” Gabriel said. Arthur’s face went thoughtful. “Long enough for someone to walk onto the estate, deliver a message, and disappear.” Nobody liked that explanation one bit.

I looked at the unopened letter again, and it suddenly felt heavier than paper had any right to be, like opening it would rearrange everything I thought I understood about my own life.

Jack noticed where my eyes had gone. “Do not,” he said softly. “You heard the message,” I said.

“I did,” he answered. “And?” I cut in. “I do not trust whoever sent it,” he said, calm. “If they truly wanted to help you, they would not have frightened you first.”

I nodded slowly. He was right. Fear had become somebody’s weapon, and I had almost let it work. Rowan stepped back to the table. “I think we have been asking the wrong question,” he said.

“Meaning?” Arthur asked. “We keep asking who killed Marionette’s father,” Rowan said. He nodded at the diaries. “Maybe we should be asking what he was investigating before he died.”

Silence. Nobody had thought of it that way. “If he found something tied to the peace conference,” Gabriel said, thinking it through, “his death might not have been about him at all.”

“It could have been about what he knew,” Jack finished. I looked between the two of them — for the first time all night, not rivals circling each other, but two boys working the same puzzle from opposite sides and actually meeting in the middle.

Arthur opened one of the library cabinets and pulled out several dusty archive boxes. “I kept everything,” he said, setting them down. “Police reports. Old articles. Personal letters. If your father was investigating something, we might find it in here.”

Hope crept back into my chest. Not certainty. Just hope, small and careful. We spent the next hour digging through yellowed paper — insurance forms, school records, old photographs, receipts, nothing unusual.

Then Jack went still. “Wait,” he said, and the whole room turned toward him. “What is it?” I asked.

He pulled a folded newspaper clipping free from inside one of the files. The headline read: *LOCAL ENGINEER DIES IN LATE-NIGHT CAR ACCIDENT.*

“Someone circled this,” Jack said, frowning. In red ink, one line had been underlined: *Police confirm that no witnesses were present.* Beneath it, a single handwritten word. *False.*

My heart skipped. “There was a witness?” Rowan took the clipping carefully, his eyes going wide. “I know this handwriting,” he said.

“Whose is it?” Arthur asked. Rowan looked straight at me. “It belongs to your father,” he said. The room fell silent. My father had written on the article reporting his own death.

Before anyone could make sense of that, another folded scrap of paper slid free and drifted onto the table. Jack picked it up. One sentence. No signature, no date.

*”The witness is still alive. Find Oscar.”*

I looked at Jack. He looked back at me, and for a second something passed between us that had nothing to do with the mystery at all — steady, quiet, the kind of look that made my chest ache in a completely different way than fear did.

Neither of us had ever heard that name before. But somehow, we both already knew our search had just found its next destination.