Bloodlines of the damned
1593 Words
The car ride back was wrapped in heavy silence. Josh didn’t speak. Lisa didn’t look up from the blur of streets flashing past the window. The iced coffee in her hand had long since gone warm, untouched.
Her thoughts raced faster than the traffic.
Nolan Grant knew her name.
Not just her name—he knew her father. Knew how he looked. Knew what happened to him.
And he had spoken about it with the unsettling calm of someone who's never surprised—only amused. Lisa felt it deep in her bones: Nolan hadn’t just stumbled across her identity.
He’d been waiting to use it.
She closed her eyes, clutching her notepad to her chest. For as long as she could remember, her father had been her only family. Her protector, her compass, her unanswered mystery. When he died under strange circumstances almost a decade ago, she thought she was the only one that knew the truth. There was no funeral closure, no whisper of the people he once knew.
Now here she was, on the verge of chasing a story that might open every locked door from her past—and possibly let something dangerous walk through.
Josh’s voice cut through gently. “Lisa. You alright?”
She kept her eyes forward. “No.”
He nodded. “Do you want to walk away from this?”
Part of her wanted to say yes. But instead, she whispered, “I don’t have anyone left, Josh. No mother. No siblings. Just my father’s silence... and Nolan Grant’s smirk.”
Josh didn’t speak for a moment.
Then: “So we dig?”
Lisa met his eyes.
“We dig"
Lisa stood in front of her locker at Radiant Communications, staring blankly at the dull metal door, her fingers tightening around the file Josh had just handed her. She didn’t hear the background chatter, didn’t feel the usual buzz of the newsroom.
Her mind was on her father.
On the truth she had spent years burying.
Ramón Herrera hadn’t died a martyr. He hadn’t been killed for chasing justice.
He’d been silenced—for trading it.
He had once sold secrets to powerful men, secrets that could collapse companies and governments. And Nolan Grant had been both a partner and a threat. The kind of man who smiled with a knife in his hand and your name already engraved on the blade.
And now Lisa stood at the edge of a story that—if exposed—wouldn’t just make headlines. It would reopen wounds. It would show the world the truth about her bloodline.
She couldn’t allow it.
“Hey,” Josh said, approaching with a printout. “Found something.”
She snapped out of it and forced a calm smile. “Yeah?”
“Grant’s wife,” he said, lowering his voice. “Her death might not have been random. The last call she made wasn’t to 911. It was to a disconnected number—traced back to an offshore shell company... that used to be under your dad’s radar in his last investigation.”
Lisa’s heart stopped.
She kept her expression neutral. “That’s... odd.”
Josh nodded. “Yeah. I was thinking we dig into it tonight. Cross-reference your father’s last known files, see what he was working on. Maybe it’s connected.”
Lisa's voice caught for half a second—but she covered it with a nod. “Sure. Good idea.”
Inside, though, she was screaming.
If Josh finds out the full truth, this story will ruin everything.
Later that night, long after most had gone home, Lisa slipped into the archives alone. She stood before the locked cabinet that held her father’s sealed records—classified, restricted, forgotten.
Her hand trembled as she held the key.
She knew Josh would come looking.
She had only a few hours to remove anything that tied Ramón Herrera to the Grant family.
Or to the crimes he helped cover up.
But as she opened the cabinet, she stopped cold.
One file was missing.
And taped to the inside of the cabinet door was a single torn piece of newspaper.
On it, a headline:
“THE TRUTH ALWAYS RETURNS.”
And scribbled in red ink:
“Be careful what you bury, Lisa.”
---
Lisa stared at the note, her breath caught in her throat.
“Be careful what you bury, Lisa.”
The red ink bled slightly into the paper, as if written in a hurry... or by someone who wanted it to feel like blood.
The file was gone. That meant someone knew.
Not just about her father.
About her.
Her fingers curled around the edge of the cabinet door as the weight of her own sins closed in like fog.
Because Lisa didn’t just carry her father’s past.
She carried her own.
There was a reason she’d fought so hard to rise through the ranks at Radiant Communications, why she never allowed herself to get too close to colleagues like Josh, why she deflected attention with sarcasm and ambition.
She had made choices—ungodly ones—in another city, under another name, when journalism wasn’t about truth for her... it was about survival.
Her first front-page piece was a lie.
Her second helped ruin a man’s life.
Her third—well, that one never got published.
But someone remembered.
Someone had dug.
And now, that someone was leaving breadcrumbs. Not to expose the Grant case—but to drag her into the spotlight.
Lisa slammed the cabinet shut and backed away, her heartbeat echoing in her ears.
She wasn’t just reporting the story.
She was about to become part of it.
And if Josh or anyone else at Radiant learned what she had done to become who she was...
She wouldn’t just lose her job.
She’d lose the right to tell anyone’s story again.
---
The bass thumped beneath Lisa’s heels as she stepped into the moody, neon-lit interior of Club Ember, where secrets melted into the music and people came to forget who they were.
She wasn’t here to forget.
She was here to remind someone—herself—what it meant to play a part.
Josh spotted her before she reached the bar, and his reaction was immediate and unfiltered.
His eyes widened. “Whoa.”
Lisa arched an eyebrow. “Something wrong?”
“You’re… not exactly dressed like a journalist,” he said with a slow grin, eyeing the sleek black dress, the sharp makeup, the small tattoo peeking from under her collarbone.
She smirked and brushed past him, tossing over her shoulder, “Good. I’m not here to take notes. I’m here to listen.”
He followed her, shaking his head with a chuckle. “You just wiped out every stereotype I had about you. I thought you slept in blazers.”
Lisa slid onto a barstool and crossed her legs, cool and unreadable. “That’s the point, Josh. Stereotypes are easy to break. Like alibis.”
He whistled low. “Alright, I deserved that one.”
She accepted the drink he ordered her without a word, then finally looked him in the eye. “You still want to cover the story together?”
Josh leaned on the counter. “I thought we already agreed.”
“I want to make sure we’re on the same page,” she said. “This story isn’t just about a murder. It’s about power. And masks. If we’re going to get close to the truth, we’ll have to get close to them. Grant’s people. His world.”
Josh nodded slowly. “You’re not just saying that to get under his skin?”
Lisa’s expression flickered for a half-second—then reset. “Maybe I am.”
He raised his glass to her. “Fine by me. Just don’t go rogue on me.”
Lisa clinked his glass. “No promises.”
As they turned to face the crowded room, a figure in a shadowed booth across the dance floor watched them closely—his eyes cold, unblinking.
Nolan Grant always watched his stories unfold.
Even when he wasn't on the page
---
The wrought-iron gates of the Grant estate creaked open slowly, as if groaning in protest of the visitors it had come to recognize.
Lisa sat rigid in the back seat of Josh’s car, her fingers twisted tightly in her lap. Beside her, Josh gave her a sidelong glance before nodding to the driver.
“Ready?”
“No,” she replied, then opened the door and stepped out anyway.
The house loomed in the gray light, stone and silence. It looked emptier than before—haunted by more than shadows this time. The murder had left no visible blood, but it had soaked into the walls.
They walked up the path, and Josh, ever casual, ever bold, reached for the front door.
“You’re doing it again,” Lisa said sharply.
He paused, confused. “Doing what?”
“Not knocking.”
Josh gave her a quick, uncertain grin. “You think he minds formalities now?”
Lisa’s eyes stayed fixed on the door. “I think we should respect the dead before we become them.”
Before Josh could respond, he pushed the door open and called out, “Grant?”
The echo of his voice seemed to crawl down the hallway.
Then came the reply—cool, deliberate, and far too close:
“By stepping into this house again… you've both signed the agreement in hell.”
Josh froze. Lisa’s skin prickled.
- Writer
