Page 53 of Bound By Blood and Lies

Somewhere along the way I lose track of the others. I push open another door expecting a guest room or an office but instead I walk straight into a scent that stops me cold. I just stand there in the doorway as the smell wraps around me like a memory I wasn’t prepared to face. It’s faint now, but it’s unmistakable.

My Tinkerbell.

My chest tightens as my eyes slowly adjust to the space around me. It’s her bedroom, clearly from years ago. The furniture is expensive; everything arranged with the kind of careful order Ackworth seems to prefer. The colours are neutral and elegant in a way that feels more curated than lived in. It’s not the room of the woman I know. It’s the room of the girl her father wanted her to be. My gaze lands on the bed and I feel something soften in my chest.

A teddy bear sits propped neatly against the pillows. The sight of it catches me off guard and a small smile tugs at the corner of my mouth as I cross the room and pick it up. The fabricis worn thin in places, the fur flattened from years of being held, and my thumb traces slowly over the frayed stitching along one ear. An image of a younger, smaller Fae curled around this thing whilst she slept hits me. I can picture her clinging to it the same way she clings to me, refusing to let go of something that makes her feel safe.

As I stand there holding it, a strange calm moves through me as I imagine Fae years from now, softer somehow, sitting on the edge of a bed with one of our kids tucked against her side as she hands them something just like this. I can already see the way she’d smile at them, giving them the kind of safety she had to fight to find, and despite the situation, I smile at the realisation of how good of a mum she is going to be.

I tuck the bear under my arm, deciding that it’s coming with me before I start moving through the room, opening drawers and checking shelves. The space tells me far more about the girl she used to be than the woman I know now. Everything is controlled but there are small rebellions scattered between the neat lines. A jewellery box is tucked half open on the dresser. Photographs pinned quietly to the mirror. I see Fae standing between Felix and their mother, all three of them laughing at something outside the frame. Little pieces of her. Proof that the girl who grew up here was never quite as obedient as her father believed.

As I make my way downstairs, I see Felix lingering in the doorway of the lounge. He isn’t moving, he is just standing there with his hands braced against the frame as his eyes drift slowly across the room like he’s seeing it properly for the first time.

By the time we step back outside, the night has settled across the estate and the last trace of daylight is gone. The gravel shifts under our boots as we make our way down the drive in silence. Felix slows halfway to the cars and then turns, his gaze lifting back toward the manor looming above us.

“He’s not running,” he says with a quiet certainty that makes me stop beside him. “Father would never run.” His jaw tightens slightly as he studies the windows. “He’s hiding, and someone is helping.”

I pull my phone from my pocket and give his shoulder a brief pat as I pass him on the way toward his car. “When we find him… we’ll find Fisher and the girls with him too.”

Felix sighs, still staring ahead like he’s trying to see through the walls and into whatever secrets the house is holding onto. The wind shifts through the trees, rustling the hedges that line the driveway. I glance back once more before climbing into the car.

The longer I stare at it, the heavier the feeling of dread settles into my chest.

There are too many moving pieces.

And fewer people I can trust with every step we take.

CHAPTER 16

FAE

It’s been a strange week.

When I first woke up here, I convinced myself it was just going to be another version of hell. Another room. Another cage. Another man standing over me deciding what my body was worth that day. Instead, it turned out to be something worse.

Purgatory.

Not hell and not heaven either. I am just suspended in a time where nothing is quite bad enough to justify screaming… but nothing is safe enough to let your guard down for even a second. I’m fed better than I have been in weeks, maybe even months. Everything is organic and smells like someone cared about cooking it.

Longstaff has a pattern, one I’ve started using to count the days. He comes in the morning with breakfast and lunch together, setting the tray down with quiet efficiency before leaving again. After that, the house sinks into silence. There are no footsteps on the stairs, no voices through the walls, just the occasional creak of the building settling and the faint sound of cars passing somewhere far below the windows. By evening he returns with dinner, placing a hot meal carefully on the small table like this is some kind of twisted bed and breakfast insteadof a prison. Once he leaves, the quiet settles back in and stays like that until morning.

I sigh and glance down at the vitamins sitting beside my empty plate. I pick them up one by one, swallowing them with long gulps of fresh water. Longstaff brought new books this evening for me to read. Part of me wants to throw them straight back at his head and refuse them out of sheer spite. The other part of me is so painfully bored that I know I’ll open one the second I can.

The mattress beneath me is soft enough that my body has properly started to heal. Everything here is just so comfortable. And yet, I’m still not allowed to leave. The door locks every time he walks out, the chains around my ankle and wrist sit exactly where they were the day I woke up here, and the windows stay locked. So yes…

Purgatory.

In between the warm meals and the quiet hours spent staring at pages I can barely focus on, the nightmares still come. Sometimes I dream that Roman bursts through the door, his face twisted in disgust as his voice cuts through the room and he shouts at me for what’s growing inside my body. Other nights it’s Robyn. Her body folds to the floor again and again whilst I scream her name until my throat burns raw and my chest feels like it’s collapsing in on itself.

Every time I wake up, I reach for her before I remember she isn’t here. I don’t know where she is. I don’t even know if she’s alive, and the not knowing gnaws at me in a way I can’t seem to escape. Beneath all of that sits the quieter, heavier truth of the child growing inside me. I still don’t know whose it is. I’m not sure I want to either. I don’t know how to faceityet, so most of the time I don’t. I push it somewhere deeper and force myself to focus on the only thing I can control… getting through the day in front of me.

One meal.

One book.

One hour at a time.

I’m halfway through another chapter when footsteps start climbing the stairs. The sound drags me out of the book as my attention snaps toward the door. My muscles tighten. He’s not meant to be here right now and the timing is wrong. My pulse begins to pick up as the sound reaches the landing. Something about it feels off. I listen harder. The footsteps are lighter than usual. Quieter. They are not the heavy, deliberate weight I’ve grown used to over the past week and unease spreads slowly through my chest as I stare at the door.