Chapter 92: A Message for Freya

The following afternoon, Freya received an email through the contact form on her author website. At first she assumed it was another reader message.

The subject changed that assumption immediately.

DAVID STONEBRIDGE.

Freya opened it carefully.

The message contained only three lines: "Your father kept a second archive. Victor never found it. Ask where your mother stored her design originals."

There was no signature.

Freya called Louis before touching anything else.

He arrived home with Derek twenty minutes later. Derek examined the email headers and found they had been routed through multiple services.

"Could be Victor," Freya said.

"Could be someone watching Victor," Derek replied.

The phrase about her mother's design originals triggered a memory.

Freya's mother had been an architect and interior designer. After her death, several portfolios and rolled drawings had been donated to a university archive—or at least that was what the original Freya believed.

Freya searched old estate documents. A receipt showed that most professional materials had indeed gone to the university, but one collection was listed as retained by family.

"The storage unit?" Louis asked.

Freya shook her head. "We went through almost everything there."

Then she remembered the old family house.

It had been sold after her parents died, but some built-in storage had been emptied into a small archive locker maintained by her mother's former design studio.

The studio still existed under different ownership.

Derek contacted the manager using a routine records inquiry. To everyone's surprise, the locker was still registered under Freya's mother's name because nobody had ever claimed it.

Freya stared at Louis. "How does a box survive untouched for this long?"

"People are very good at ignoring old paperwork," Derek said.

They arranged to inspect it the next morning.

That evening, Freya tried to write but couldn't focus. Louis sat nearby reviewing Victor's documents.

"Do you think the email sender is helping us?" she asked.

"Maybe."

"You hate that word."

"It's accurate."

Freya sighed and closed her laptop.

Her phone displayed a notification from her secondhand store. Another dress had sold.

The normality of it was absurd.

"I used to think selling those clothes would be the complicated part of my new life," she said.

Louis looked up. "New life?"

Freya froze.

Again.

His gaze remained on her.

This time he didn't let the phrase pass completely. "You do that often."

"Do what?"

"Talk as though your life started after my bankruptcy."

Freya's pulse quickened.

Louis closed his document. "I'm not asking tonight."

She looked at him with mixed relief and guilt.

"But when you're ready," he continued, "I want the truth."

Freya nodded slowly.

"Okay."

For the first time, she had actually promised to tell him.

Freya reopened her manuscript after Louis went to shower but didn't write. Instead, she opened the private notebook containing her original-plot notes. At the bottom of the latest page she wrote: 'Tell Louis soon.' She underlined it once. The promise made the confession more frightening, but also strangely inevitable. Secrets were useful only while they protected something. Hers was beginning to damage the trust it had once protected.