GIANNA

GIANNA
After everything — the kidnapping, the rescue, the exhaustion of being pieced back together in a hospital bed — Anise needed air.

Not oxygen. Not just space.

She needed a different roof, different floors. She needed to breathe where her mother’s memory didn’t linger in the walls like perfume and grief.

So she packed a bag and went to Aunt Marie’s house.

It wasn’t unusual. She’d spent entire summers there as a kid. Aunt Marie had always loved her like a second daughter, always braided her hair, always gave her the slightly bigger slice of cake without saying why. The way she’d hug her felt different. Deeper. And Anise had needed that warmth now, more than ever.

She’d only been there two nights when the house shifted again — not dramatically, not violently. But with the creak of footsteps and the low hum of voices. Aunt Marie’s grown children were visiting.

Anise had barely finished putting on her sweatshirt when a soft knock hit the bedroom door.

She looked up. It opened before she could answer.

Gianna stepped inside. She’s Aunt Marie’s only daughter and the eldest of them all.

Her presence was sharp, even without words. Short black bob, eyes smudged with just enough eyeliner to look like she never truly slept. A tiny hoop ring pierced her septum, and on her left forearm, a fine-lined tattoo of a moth stretched between two crescent moons. She was wearing a vintage band tee and ankle boots inside the house — like she never fully arrived or never intended to stay.

They locked eyes.

Anise gave a small smile. “Hey.”

Gianna didn’t return it.

She just looked around the room like something had been moved. Like something had been taken.

“I didn’t know you were here,” she said finally, stepping fully inside.

“Yeah,” Anise replied, trying to keep the awkward out of her voice. “Aunt Marie invited me....After everything that happened… I just needed a little peace.”

Gianna tilted her head slightly. “Must be nice. Getting invited.”

Anise’s brows drew together. “You make it sound like I wasn’t supposed to be.”

Gianna gave a soft shrug, eyes scanning the bookshelf. “I mean… this used to be my room. But it’s fine. You need peace.”

Anise straightened slowly. “Oh. I didn’t know that. I can move if—”

“I said it’s fine,” Gianna cut in, brushing an invisible speck from her sleeve. “You’re family, right?”

The words hit her clean, but cold to the core.

Anise swallowed and moved to the edge of the bed. “You staying long?”

“A couple of days. My brothers are around too. The whole house feels like a flashback.” Gianna paused. “Except for you being here.”

It wasn’t a joke. But she smiled anyway.

That same tight, sharp smile Anise remembered from when they were younger. The one Gianna always wore when someone else got praised in front of her.

Before Anise could answer, Gianna wandered over to the dresser and picked up a framed photo. Anise recognized it immediately — she was maybe ten in it, standing beside Aunt Marie at a school play. Aunt Marie’s hand was proudly on her shoulder.

Gianna looked at it for a long time.

“She framed this?” she murmured, mostly to herself.

“Yeah,” Anise said quietly. “That was the day I played Joseph in the nativity. My costume fell off halfway through.”

Gianna set the photo back down — just a little too hard.

“You were always here, weren’t you?”

“I mean, only during holidays—”

“She called you her sunshine,” Gianna said, not turning around. “Do you remember that?”

Anise blinked. “I… yeah. Sometimes.”

“She never called me that.” Gianna turned to her now, eyes darker than before. “Not once.”

The silence returned. But this time, it wasn’t gentle.

Anise stood slowly. “Gianna… I never tried to replace anyone. I was just a kid.”

“You don’t have to try. Some people just walk into a room and take up all the space.”

Anise felt something in her chest tighten — guilt, confusion, weariness from years of unresolved something. But she kept her voice calm.

“I’m not trying to take anything from you.”

Gianna smirked. “Then why does it feel like you already did?”



Later that afternoon, the house was louder — laughter from downstairs, the clatter of dishes, the hum of old family inside old walls. Anise stayed upstairs.

She sat at the window, watching nothing in particular, thinking of everything.

Being here was supposed to feel safe with Aunt Marie’s soft voice, the scent of home-cooked stew, The creak of the staircase she’d once raced up in socks.

But now, it just felt… wrong.

Gianna’s words still echoed.

You don’t have to try. Some people just walk into a room and take up all the space.
She didn’t want to believe it was jealousy.

Maybe it was grief, or maybe it was history twisting in ways none of them knew how to fix.

Her phone buzzed on the windowsill. A text from Kevin.

They’re trying to fast-track Elgin’s hearing. You might not get another window. If you want to see him, it has to be soon.
Anise stared at the screen.

Her father.

Anise exhaled, staring at the message.

She had seen him before — after they found him, after the years of silence. That first time, she wasn’t sure what she felt. Rage. Sadness. Maybe even guilt for wanting to believe he wasn’t the monster they all thought.

But that was before the warehouse, before Wesley Grant’s face filled her nightmares, Before she realized how deep everything went.

Now, she needed something more than closure.

She needed answers.

She needed him — the version of her father that only he could reveal.

Anise stood and grabbed her hoodie from the chair. She could still hear faint laughter downstairs. Gianna’s voice was missing from it, but she didn't care.

She opened the door, stepped out, and texted Kevin back.

Let’s go. I want to see him.



The prison wasn’t what Anise expected. No buzzing gates. No angry guards with rifles. No clanging steel bars. Just… beige walls, old tile floors, and the scent of disinfectant so sharp it stung her nose. It was almost too ordinary for a place that held men accused of extraordinary sins.

Kevin parked outside and waited in the car. He knew better than to walk her in. This was something she had to do on her own.

The officer at the front desk scanned her ID, barely glanced at her face. “Inmate Morgan. Ten minutes. No physical contact.”
As if that warning mattered. She hadn’t touched her father in fifteen years. A decade and a half of absence already sat between them like barbed wire.

She followed another guard down a narrow hallway. The light above her flickered. Her palms were sweating, but her spine stayed straight.

She had to be strong. She had survived things that broke grown men.

But still—when they stopped at the visitor room, when the glass separated her from the man in the seat—something inside her shuddered.

He looked older now. Not in the way time usually marks a man, but in the way pain does. His shoulders had shrunk in on themselves. His hair was streaked with more gray than she remembered from their last meeting. But the eyes…

The eyes were the same.

Sharp, A little too aware like he never fully let himself rest. And the moment he saw, her, something in his jaw locked tight.

Anise sat down on the opposite side of the glass.

He picked up the receiver.

So did she.

No “hello.” No “how are you?” No false softness.

Just silence—for three long seconds.

Then her voice came out soft and steady..

“You look different.”

Elgin’s lips curled faintly. “So do you.”

“I heard they’re speeding up your case. I might not get another chance to see you.”

His eyes flicked to the side, then back to her. “Didn’t think you’d want another chance.”

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “Until I started looking for the truth.”

There was a long pause.

Then Elgin leaned slightly forward. “And what did you find?”

Anise hesitated. “Pieces,Scattered ones, About Mom, About Wesley Grant and the warehouses. About a badge in a box. Things that don’t make sense—unless someone put them there on purpose.”

Elgin’s face changed.

Only slightly. A twitch of the mouth. A blink that came slower than the last.

“You said badge?” he murmured.

Anise nodded. “You knew about it, didn’t you?”

He exhaled through his nose, a sound halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “She always kept it in a satin pouch. Thought hiding it under your bed was safe enough.”

Anise’s heart skipped. “So it was real? The badge? It belonged to someone in the force?”

“No,” Elgin said quietly. “It belonged to someone pretending to be.”

Anise’s skin prickled.

“She was on to something, wasn’t she?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper. “Mom. She had something she wasn’t supposed to. She knew something she never should’ve known.”

Elgin didn’t speak.

He just looked at her — the same way he’d once looked at his ex-wife in a parking lot after a close call, back when they were still young, still running. The look of a man trying not to lose the one thing he couldn’t protect.

“I need you to tell me,” Anise said, gripping the phone tightly. “I need to know if she died because of you.”

Elgin leaned back for a long second. Ran a hand down his face.

That cut through him. She saw it. The recoil.

“You think I haven’t asked myself that every damn day since she was taken from us?” he said, low. “You think I haven’t rewound that night in my head so many times I forgot what silence sounds like?”

“You left,” Anise said, her voice sharp now. “You ran.”

“I ran because they would’ve killed me too,” he snapped. “Because if I died, you and your brother would’ve had nobody. And because nobody would’ve believed me anyway.”

Anise’s breath caught.

“Then tell me now. Make me believe you.”

He opened his mouth—but she cut in.

“Because after I saw you that first time… I was taken.”

Elgin froze.

“I was kidnapped,” she said, voice tight. “I was drugged, held in a warehouse by men with guns. Wesley Grant’s men. I woke up in a room underground with a bag over my head. I could’ve died in there, Dad. And you know what haunted me most?”

Elgin’s knuckles whitened on the receiver. He leaned in fast, eyes wide, wild.

“You what—?”

“I kept thinking about Mom. About what she must’ve gone through. About how she must’ve felt being hunted. And for a moment, I thought maybe you were the reason she died. Maybe you were next—and maybe I was paying for both of you.”

He stared at her like something inside him had broken open.

“You were—Jesus, Anise—” His voice cracked. “You were taken?”

She nodded.

“Elijah Dowen is dead. So is the woman who helped Mom transcribe the footage. The man who ran the safehouse? Vanished. The moment I got too close, people started dying. So don’t sit there and act like this isn’t life or death.”

Elgin swallowed hard. “Did they hurt you?”

“They tried. But I’m still here.”

He looked down at the table, shoulders tense. When he spoke again, his voice was barely a whisper.

“I didn’t just run to protect myself. I ran because your mother told me to.”

Anise blinked. “What?”