Chapter 112 Chapter 112
Cass didn’t wait for permission.
Not from Lena.
Not from Jace.
Not from anyone.
That evening, she went straight home, locked her door, and pulled out every piece of paper she had ever written since that night.
The diary. Notes. Fragments. Half memories she had scribbled down at random hours when sleep refused to stay.
She spread them across her bed like evidence.
Like she was building something out of broken glass.
Lena had texted her three times.
are you okay?
don’t do something reckless
answer me cass
Cass didn’t reply.
Because for the first time, she wasn’t reacting.
She was tracing.
Looking for patterns.
Looking for what everyone had been circling but never touching directly.
And it hit her slowly.
Not like a memory.
Like pressure building behind her eyes.
The room.
The argument.
The voices overlapping.
But something new surfaced this time.
A detail she had never let herself sit with.
Not because she forgot it.
But because she had never understood it.
A second presence.
Not her father.
Not the man who confessed.
Someone else.
Someone who wasn’t supposed to be in that space.
Cass sat back slowly.
Her breathing changed.
“No,” she whispered to herself. “That wasn’t…”
But her hands were already shaking.
Because the pattern didn’t lie.
Someone else had been there.
And no one had mentioned them.
Her phone rang.
She looked at it.
Jace.
She answered immediately.
“Cass,” his voice came fast, lower than usual. “Where are you?”
“Home.”
A pause.
“You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“I am alone,” she said quietly. “That’s kind of the point.”
Silence on his end.
Then—
“I’m coming.”
Cass shook her head even though he couldn’t see it.
“No. I need to do this.”
Jace’s voice tightened slightly.
“Do what?”
Cass looked at the scattered papers on her bed.
“I think I missed something.”
That made him quiet.
Longer this time.
“What kind of something?” he asked carefully.
Cass swallowed.
“The kind that changes everything again.”
Another pause.
Then Jace said something different.
Not protective.
Not controlling.
Just steady.
“Tell me when you’re ready.”
And he hung up.
Cass stared at her phone for a moment longer.
Then set it aside.
She went back to the papers.
Back to the fragments.
And this time she didn’t stop when it got uncomfortable.
She pushed through it.
Until something clicked.
Not fully.
But enough.
A gap.
A missing piece.
And it had a name shape to it.
Someone had been erased from the version everyone repeated.
Not forgotten.
Removed.
Cass stood up slowly.
Her heart was pounding now.
Because if that was true—
then everything she had been told wasn’t just incomplete.
It was curated.
At the same time, elsewhere in the city, Zayelle sat alone in a quiet space, staring at a phone she wasn’t using.
Marvin’s name had appeared twice earlier.
She hadn’t answered.
Jace’s once.
She hadn’t responded either.
But Cass’s name lingered in her mind differently.
Because Cass wasn’t just reacting anymore.
She was moving.
Zayelle exhaled slowly.
“That’s not how this was supposed to go,” she murmured.
Her fingers tightened slightly on the phone.
And for the first time since everything started—
she looked uncertain.
Cass didn’t sleep again.
By morning, she was already dressed, already outside, already walking without a destination.
Her mind kept returning to the same point.
The missing presence.
The gap in every version of the story.
And the more she thought about it—
the more it felt less like something forgotten…
and more like something deliberately hidden from her.
She stopped walking when she reached the edge of campus.
Lena was already there.
Waiting.
Arms crossed.
Tired eyes.
“You didn’t sleep,” Lena said immediately.
Cass shook her head.
“I found something.”
That got Lena’s attention instantly.
“What kind of something?”
Cass hesitated.
Then—
“I think someone was there that night who no one is talking about.”
Lena went still.
“That’s not possible.”
Cass met her eyes.
“I think it is.”
A beat.
Then Lena exhaled sharply.
“…Okay,” she said slowly. “Now I understand why you look like you’re about to start a war.”
Cass didn’t smile.
Because she wasn’t joking.
Not anymore.
Jace arrived moments later.
And the second he saw her face, he knew.
“What did you find?” he asked quietly.
Cass looked at both of them.
And for the first time—
she didn’t feel lost in the truth.
She felt like she was standing at the edge of it.
“I think,” she said carefully, “we’ve been looking at the wrong version of that night this entire time.”
Silence.
Then Jace spoke softly.
“Then we stop guessing.”
Cass nodded.
“No more guessing.”
Lena straightened slightly.
“So what now?”
Cass looked toward the school building.
Long.
Still.
Full of people who thought they knew what happened.
And said—
“Now we find the person they erased.”
And somewhere deep inside that silence—
something finally shifted into place.