Page 68 of Vows of Silence

Beneath that conversation, another note.

She told him she feels invisible. Why?

A horrible feeling crept up my spine.

Not fear exactly.

Violation.

Like someone had reached inside my head and spread my thoughts out across the room for inspection.

There were dozens of notes like that scattered throughout the folder.

She apologises constantly even when she’s done nothing wrong.

Why does she feel guilty for existing?

She gets defensive whenever her father is mentioned.

Asked him if she was difficult to love.

I swallowed hard and kept turning pages.

The deeper I got into the folder, the stranger it became. Some conversations had entire paragraphs highlighted. Others had dates written beside them with times and locations underneath, like Silas had cross-referenced them against something else entirely.

One page made my chest ache unexpectedly.

Isabelle:Do you think it’s possible to miss someone you’ve never met?

Luca:I miss you all the time, little ember. More than you’ll ever truly understand.

I remembered that conversation.

I had been drunk in my bedroom after one of my mother’s charity events, curled up on the floor with my heels kicked off whilst Luca kept me company over messages.

And Silas had this.

How?

That question started screaming louder in my head with every page I turned.

How the hell did he have access to all of this?

Had he hacked Luca?

Had he been watching us both?

Was Luca even safe?

My fingers tightened around the papers as panic slowly started creeping into my chest. It was then I registered that all of these text messages were appearing from Luca’s perspective.

He’d cloned Luca’s phone?How?

Another page slipped loose from the stack and fluttered onto the desk.

Isabelle:Sometimes I think I could disappear and nobody in this house would notice for days.

Luca:I’d notice.