The truth wasn’t in a locked safe or a hidden file; it was in a yellowing envelope, and he was too afraid to open it.
The silence in Lysander’s study was a physical presence, thick and heavy with the ghosts of his past. My own declaration — “Start with that.” — still hung in the air between us, a challenge I had thrown down not as an adversary, but as an anchor. I watched him stand before his father’s old, imposing desk, the sealed envelope looking devastatingly fragile in his hands. It was just paper, yet it held the power to shatter the man I loved.
“I’ve had this since I was seventeen,” he said, his voice rough, stripped of its usual commanding edge. “The lawyers gave it to me. It was with her effects. I… I never could.”
I moved to stand beside him, not touching, but letting my prese
