Chapter 12: The Letter Burns
813 Words
I found the book by accident, though deep down, I knew nothing in this estate ever happened by chance.
The eastern library was a vault of forgotten knowledge, its silence thick with dust and disuse. I wasn’t looking for anything specific, only space. Distance. Somewhere Damien hadn’t haunted yet with his truths or half-lies.
But then my fingers caught on a loose spine at the top shelf. Faded leather, gold lettering barely legible.
An Empire of Ash.
A fitting title for everything we were trying to survive.
I tugged it free. The cover cracked like brittle bone. And inside, scrawled small in the top corner, was a name written not in ink but in memory:
Carmela Bianchi.
My mother.
I stared at it, the name burning into my palm like fire through silk. I hadn’t seen her handwriting since I was a child, had barely been allowed to speak her name. My pulse stuttered. The quiet around me sharpened.
This wasn’t just a book.
I ran my fingers along the shelf and felt it, a tiny bump, a notch between volumes that shouldn’t exist.
I pressed.
The shelf clicked.
It creaked forward on hidden hinges, groaning like it hadn’t moved in a decade. Behind it: a hollow cavity. Dust. Cold. Darkness. And a wooden box, the kind carpenters used when they built things not meant to last.
My hands shook as I pulled it out.
Inside: a single envelope, yellowed, delicate, sealed with wax so deep a red it looked like dried blood. My name was written across it. Slanted script. Unmistakable.
My mother had written this to me before I was ever old enough to understand what she feared.
I cracked the seal.
And read five lines that cut deeper than anything Damien had ever said:
He will break you.
Unless you break him first.
The world is made of men like your father.
Men like Damien.
Win. Or die trying.
The last line trailed, unfinished.
They killed me before I could finish this.
The words weren’t just a warning.
They were a prophecy.
I found Damien in the courtyard. He stood beneath the skeletal branches of a black pine, the cold wind carving through his coat, his posture carved from stone.
He didn’t look up when I approached.
Did you know about the letter? I asked.
Yes.
How long?
Since before you arrived.
I stepped in front of him, forcing his gaze to meet mine.
Why hide it?
His voice was steady. Because it didn’t change anything.
It changes everything, I snapped.
Damien’s jaw flexed.
She died trying to warn you, I whispered. And you let her rot in that car like she was nothing.
His eyes snapped to mine, no longer cold, just violent.
I didn’t kill your mother.
No, I said. But you let my father bury her.
He stepped closer, his voice lowering to something that scraped bone.
Your father had her silenced. I have the footage. I have the order. I have the man who planted the bomb rotting in my basement.
The words hit like bullets.
My vision narrowed.
You’re lying.
I don’t lie about the dead.
The silence between us stretched until it buckled. Wind rustled the trees above, but the courtyard felt airless.
He turned and walked away, slow, heavy.
And I stood there, the truth bleeding between us like a wound that would never scab over.
Back in my room, I sat on the edge of the bed with the letter trembling in my hands.
I read it again.
And again.
Each time, the paper felt heavier. Like it remembered being written. Like it had absorbed the final breath of the woman who dared write it.
She’d known.
Carmela had known what I would become. What this place would do to me. What men like Damien, like my father, would try to carve out of me.
I held the corner of the parchment over the flame of a candle.
It didn’t take long.
The fire curled around the edge, blackening, devouring. The ink ran like tears. The wax dripped into a blistered stain on the table.
She was gone again.
But this time, I let her go.
A knock broke the silence. Aleksandr stepped in, his shoulders filling the doorway, his presence silent but not soft.
He told you, he said.
I nodded.
He walked to the table, glanced at the charred edges of the paper still smoldering.
Good, he said. Now stop surviving. Start playing.
I looked up. What makes you think I wasn’t already?
A smirk. Almost approving. Because you haven’t drawn blood yet.
I rose to meet his stare. My voice low. Steel behind silk.
You’ll know when I do.
He didn’t argue.
He left the room without another word.
But long after he was gone, I sat in the smoke and shadows, hearing only one voice:
Break him first.
- Writer
