Her thumb stroked the thick, creamy paper of the envelope. It was a physical piece of him in her hands, a stark contrast to the digital ghosts she had just exorcised from her phone.
Tear it up. Throw it away.
Her mind screamed the command. But her hands wouldn’t obey.
He was a liar. But Cole was a liar, too. A different kind. Cole’s lies were designed to trap her, to make her smaller. Kian’s lies… what were they for?
Her hand, the one that so often rested on her belly, moved to the envelope. She was making a decision for two now. She needed answers. Not for him. Not even for herself. For the tiny, unknowable life she was carrying.
With a sharp, decisive rip, she tore it open.
The letter was several pages long, filled with the same dark, decisive handwriting as the name on the envelope.
Audrey,
There is no excuse for my lie. Not one. I want you to know that before you read another word. I lied about my name, my life, my family. And that lie shattered everything between us. I don’t expect you to forgive me. Maybe I don’t deserve it. But I am begging you to let me tell you the truth.
All of it.
Audrey’s breath hitched. She sank onto Maya’s lumpy sofa, the letter trembling in her hand.
My name is Kian Sterling. I own a shipping company. It’s a prison made of money and expectation, and for years, I’ve tried to escape it. The docks, The Crow’s Nest… that was my escape. It was the only place I could just be Kian. The man, not the name. Then I met you. You didn’t see a bank account or a headline. You saw me. You talked about history and art with a fire in your eyes that made me feel more real than I have in a decade. Lying to you started as a defense mechanism, a way to protect that one real thing from the poison of my world. By the time I realized I was in love with you, the lie was a cage I’d built around us both.
Love. The word was a hot brand on the page. She flinched, but kept reading.
Now for the part you need to know. The part I couldn’t explain on the street.
The boy in the picture is not my son.
Audrey’s heart stopped. She read the line again. And again.
His name is Leo. His mother, Cassandra Thorne, is an old acquaintance. Her family lost their fortune, and she became desperate. My mother, Beatrice, saw an opportunity. She is paying Cassandra to stage this entire drama. The accidental meetings, the tabloid photos, the sad story of an abandoned child. It’s all a performance, bought and paid for with Sterling money. It’s a weapon designed to destroy you, to paint me as a monster, and to drive you away.
I hesitated when you asked me on the street because the truth sounds like the ravings of a madman. How could I explain a conspiracy like that in thirty seconds? How could I ask you to believe that my own mother would orchestrate something so cruel? But she would. To her, you are a threat to the Sterling legacy. And she eliminates threats.
Audrey felt a chill crawl up her spine. Beatrice’s voice at the gala echoed in her head. Stay away from my son. It wasn’t a warning. It was a declaration of war.
I know you have no reason to believe me. A man who lies about his name will lie about anything. I know that. But I swear on my life, Audrey, every word of this is the truth. The only truth that mattered was what I felt for you. And that was real.
I am not Cole. I would never hurt you to control you. I would burn down my entire empire to protect you.
Don’t forgive me. Just let me prove it.
Yours, Kian.
She dropped the letter as if it were on fire. Her mind was a battlefield. One part of her, the part conditioned by Cole, screamed, It’s a trick. A more sophisticated lie.
But another part, a smaller, quieter part, whispered, What if it’s true?
The thought was terrifying. If he was telling the truth, then she was caught in the crossfire of a war she didn’t understand, waged by a woman with limitless resources.
The ringing of her phone cut through the silence. Not her cell. Maya’s landline. Maya had given the number to the museum for emergencies.
Her heart pounded. She picked it up. “Hello?”
“Audrey? It’s Harrison Abernathy.”
The head of the museum board. Her blood ran cold. He was calling to fire her. After the scene at the gala, it was inevitable.
“Mr. Abernathy,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.
“Audrey, my dear, I have the most peculiar, wonderful news.” He sounded flustered, almost giddy. “That anonymous complaint against you? We found the source.”
“You did?”
“Yes! Our IT department received an anonymous tip this morning. A data packet, whatever the devil that means. It traced the complaint to a burner email account, which was linked to a prepaid cell phone registered to a Jenna Anderson.”
Jenna. Cole’s sister. The enabler. The one who always looked at Audrey with a venomous sweetness.
“The board has dismissed the complaint entirely,” Harrison continued. “Your record is cleared. Consider the matter obliterated. We are so terribly sorry for the stress this must have caused.”
Audrey sank back against the sofa cushions, stunned. “I… I don’t know what to say.”
“No need to say anything! Just get well and come back to us. Your exhibit is a triumph!”
She hung up the phone, her mind reeling. An anonymous tip. A data packet. It was too clean, too professional. It was the work of a ghost. The kind of ghost a man like Kian Sterling could afford to hire.
Let me prove it.
His words. Was this it? Was this his proof? An act of protection from the shadows, without asking for credit?
She looked at the letter lying on the floor. It was no longer just the words of a liar. It was a piece of a puzzle that was starting to make a terrifying kind of sense.
A sharp buzz from the apartment’s intercom made her jump.
She pressed the button. “Hello?”
“Courier delivery,” a man’s voice crackled. “For Audrey Wells, care of Maya Lin.”
Her breath caught in her throat. “Just a minute.”
She buzzed him in and waited by the door, her heart hammering. The footsteps came up the stairs. A knock.
She opened the door to a young man in a helmet holding out a small, padded envelope. She signed for it and closed the door, her back pressed against the cool wood.
This envelope was identical to the first.
She tore it open.
There was no letter this time. Just a single, small, old-fashioned brass key. Tucked alongside it was a folded piece of paper.
She unfolded it. It was a newspaper clipping, yellowed with age. A short article from a local paper dated over twenty years ago.
The headline read: “Local Family Adopts Son of Deceased Friends.”
The article detailed how the Thorne family had tragically died in a car accident, leaving behind their two-year-old son, Leo. He had been adopted by Cassandra Thorne’s parents, who raised him as their own. Making him Cassandra’s adopted brother.
Not her son.
Audrey stared at the faded print, the words blurring. He wasn’t lying. The boy wasn’t Cassandra’s son. It was all a lie.
Her eyes fell back to the key in her palm. It wasn’t a key to a penthouse or a fancy car. It was a simple, worn thing. A key to the small apartment near the docks. The place where he was just Kian.
An offering. A choice. A silent plea to come back to the one place that had ever felt real.