Chapter 100 #100
Chapter 100
~Third Person POV~
The house was quiet.
Dante's car was gone. Tyler and Gramps were in his study downstairs, door closed. Cynthia was out. Monica had left early that morning to see Jack.
Shailyn stood at the top of the stairs, her hand gripping the banister.
"Now or never," she whispered.
She walked into the bedroom, closing the door behind her softly, as if the sound alone might betray her.
The room looked the same as always. Clean. Organized. Perfect.
Too perfect.
She started with the obvious things. The dresser drawers. The closet. The nightstand.
Nothing.
Just clothes, jewelry, and the usual clutter of everyday life.
Then her eyes landed on the wedding photos.
They lined the shelf above the fireplace, arranged neatly in silver frames. Her and Dante on their wedding day. Him lifting her veil. Then dancing. Him looking at her like she was everything.
She picked up the largest one, studying it closely.
Something tugged at the back of her mind.
She stared harder.
The ballroom. The gold curtains. The way the light had hit the chandelier.
Then—
Flash.
She was standing in that exact ballroom. A photographer was adjusting her chin, tilting it slightly to the left. Dante was beside her, laughing at something someone off-camera had said. The photographer had yelled "Perfect, hold it!" and the shutter clicked.
Shailyn gasped, nearly dropping the frame.
"That's real," she breathed. "That actually happened."
She set the photo down carefully, her hands trembling.
A real memory. Triggered by looking at the picture.
Hannah was right. Familiar things could unlock things.
She needed more.
She left the bedroom and headed downstairs, bypassing the living room entirely. Tyler's study door was still closed, a thin line of light visible underneath.
She bypassed it and went to Dante's study instead.
The door was unlocked.
She pushed it open and stepped inside.
The room smelled like leather and old paper. His desk sat in the center, immaculate as always. A pen placed perfectly parallel to the edge of a leather portfolio.
She started with the desk drawers.
Contracts. Financial documents. Meeting schedules.
Nothing unusual.
She moved to the filing cabinet against the wall, pulling open the first drawer. More contracts. Property documents. Insurance papers.
Second drawer. Tax records. Investment summaries.
Third drawer.
She paused.
This one was different. Locked.
She tried the handle. It didn't budge.
She looked around the desk, searching for a key. Nothing obvious.
Then she remembered Dante kept a spare key for most locks in the top right drawer of his desk, inside a small leather pouch. That's a memory too because she hasn't had a reason to check his study.
She found it in seconds.
The lock clicked open.
Inside, the drawer was mostly empty. A single envelope sat at the bottom, tucked beneath a stack of blank paper like someone had tried to hide it.
She pulled it out.
No label. No name.
She opened it.
Inside was a single letter. Handwritten. The paper was old, slightly yellowed at the edges. The handwriting was elegant, and familiar.
She pulled it out carefully.
At the top, in neat cursive: For my darling Shailyn.
Her mother's handwriting.
"What are you doing here?" she whispered.
Her mother had been in a hospital for years. She couldn't have written this recently. Which meant this letter was old.
So why was it in Dante's study?
Why hadn't he given it to her?
She wanted to read it right there, standing in the middle of his study, but something stopped her. A feeling. A warning.
Not here.
She tucked the letter into the pocket of her cardigan and closed the filing cabinet. She replaced the key in its pouch, pushed the drawer shut, and left the room exactly as she had found it.
Back in the bedroom, she locked the door and sat on the edge of the bed.
Her hands were shaking.
She pulled the letter out slowly, holding it like it was made of glass.
Her mother's handwriting stared back at her.
She unfolded it.
Her eyes moved across the words.
Line by line.
Sentence by sentence.
The first paragraph made her grip tighten.
The second made her breath catch.
By the third, her vision was blurring.
She kept reading.
Every word hit harder than the last. Every sentence peeled back another layer of something she hadn't known existed. Her mother's words were precise, deliberate, and urgent. Like she had written this knowing exactly what was at stake.
The letter held everything.
Every detail.
Every truth.
Every answer Shailyn had been searching for since she woke up in that hospital bed.
And it was worse than she had ever imagined.
The letter trembled in her hands.
Her breathing came faster. Shallower.
The room started spinning.
"No, no, no—"
The letter slipped from her fingers, floating to the floor like a feather.
Her chest tightened, crushing inward, like invisible hands were squeezing the air out of her lungs.
She tried to breathe. Couldn't.
Tried to stand. Her legs buckled.
She grabbed the edge of the bed, knuckles white, and then—
Everything hit her.
Not one memory. Not a flash. Not a fragment.
All of it.
Every single thing she had lost crashed into her mind at once, a dam breaking, a flood with no warning and no mercy. Images, voices, feelings, moments, all of them slamming into her simultaneously, overlapping, tangling, overwhelming every nerve in her body.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream.
The room tilted violently.
Her knees hit the floor.
She couldn't see. Couldn't think. Couldn't breathe.
Her hand fumbled blindly. Found her phone on the nightstand. Knocked it off.
It clattered to the floor beside the letter.
She grabbed it with shaking hands, her vision swimming, barely able to focus on the screen.
Dwayne's name.
She didn't think. Couldn't think.
She pressed call.
It rang once.
"Shailyn?"
She opened her mouth. Nothing came out.
"Shailyn? Can you hear me?"
A choked sound escaped her throat. Not words. Just air.
"Shailyn! What's wrong? Talk to me!"
She tried. Tried to form a single word. Her lips moved but her body wasn't listening anymore.
"Shailyn! Shailyn!"
His voice was distant now. Far away. Like she was sinking underwater and his voice was somewhere above the surface.
The phone slipped from her fingers.
She could hear him still calling her name, muffled now, the phone face-down on the carpet.
"Shailyn! SHAILYN!"
The room was going dark.
The last thing she saw was the letter, lying on the floor beside her, her mother's handwriting facing up, the words still visible.
The last thing she heard was Dwayne's voice, desperate and raw, calling her name over and over and over.
Then everything went black.