Chapter 6 - THE WOMAN BEHIND THE DOOR
Rachel stood in the doorway as if she had walked into a room where the walls themselves were listening.
For several seconds, neither of us spoke.
The machines beside my bed continued their quiet rhythm, beeping steadily beneath the fluorescent hospital lights.
I stared at her.
The woman who had secretly married my fiancé.
The woman who had stood beside the man who tried to destroy my face.
And now she was telling me that my mother was alive.
“Say it again,” I whispered.
Rachel swallowed.
“Your mother is alive.”
Something inside my chest tightened.
I had spent fifteen years believing my mother was dead.
I remembered the funeral.
The black dress.
The flowers.
My father's empty expression.
And Logan holding my hand while I cried.
He had told me afterward that my parents were finally together again.
That my mother had died from grief after losing my father.
But Rachel's face told me there was something much worse underneath that story.
“How long have you known?”
Rachel looked toward the hallway.
“Not here.”
“Then where?”
She stepped closer.
“Your father’s old house.”
My blood ran cold.
“That house was sold.”
“No,” Rachel whispered. “It wasn't.”
Before I could ask another question, footsteps sounded outside.
Rachel froze.
Someone was coming.
She quickly grabbed the black envelope from my bedside table.
“Whatever happens,” she whispered, “don't trust Logan.”
The door handle began to turn.
Rachel slipped behind the curtain separating my bed from the window.
The door opened.
Logan walked in.
He was wearing the same expensive charcoal suit he had worn the day before.
His face carried the perfect expression of a devastated fiancé.
Concern.
Exhaustion.
Pain.
If anyone else had seen him, they would have believed every second of it.
He approached my bed.
“Maya?”
I kept my eyes closed.
He sat beside me.
Then his hand touched mine.
His voice dropped to a whisper.
“I wish you could hear me.”
My stomach twisted.
Because beneath the tenderness in his voice, I heard something else.
Fear.
He wasn't afraid for me.
He was afraid of what I might know.
Logan leaned closer.
And then he whispered the words that made my blood run cold.
“Because if you're awake…”
May you like
He paused.
“…everything changes.”
