The cottage was colder than she remembered.
Lena stood in the basement, flashlight trembling in her hand. Her breath came out in white puffs. Her boots sank slightly in the dirt floor. Above her, the house groaned like something half-asleep.
She'd broken in through the side. No alarms. No locks left. No one came here anymore.
It had been their summer home once. Long ago. Before the fire. Before everything.
The tapes were still here — right where her memory said they'd be. She pulled the old wooden crate toward her and knelt. Her fingers brushed over the spines.
"Lena — 2009"
She slipped it into the portable player she'd brought. Pressed play.
Fuzzy static.
Then — a birthday. Her ninth.
Laughter. A cake. Her mother's voice, soft and warm. Her father, gruff but smiling. Her little brother bouncing up and down in a chair far too big for him.
And her.
In the middle.
Eyes fixed on the camera. Not smiling. Just watching.
As if she already knew she didn't belong.
She fast-forwarded. The laughter warped. The image flickered.
Now — a different day.
She was older. Eleven, maybe twelve.
The video shook as if someone was recording in secret.
The image came into focus.
Lena, standing over her brother's toy soldiers.
Stomping on them.
Her voice — cold. Distant. "He cries too much."
The screen cut to black.
Lena closed her eyes.
It was true. She had always been this way.
Later, she found the journal — her mother's. The pages were stiff from age, the ink faded in places.
"I'm scared of her. She manipulates us all. Yesterday she locked Ben in the attic. Told us he was with the neighbor. He was up there for four hours before we heard him crying."
"Martin wants to send her to the facility. We've both agreed. She needs help. Before she hurts someone."
"She smiled when I told her we were going to take a trip. I think she knows. God help us, I think she knows."
Lena didn't cry.
She didn't blink.
She just sat down in the cold dirt, the pages in her lap.
So that was the truth.
They were going to get rid of her. Her mother. Her father. They were planning to send her away.
Erase her.
Silence her.
Like she was a disease.
"They were never going to let me grow up. They were going to bury me alive in a place with white walls and locked doors."
Her hands trembled.
But not from grief.
From clarity.
"That's why you killed them," a voice in her mind said.
"They wanted to take your story away. So you rewrote it. You took back the ending."
Lena stood up slowly, her pulse calm again.
"They never saw me," she whispered.
"Only the version they wanted."
She touched the old, dusty support beam beside her. Scarred, splintered — a place where her father once chained their old dog because
"he barked too much."
She remembered that.
She remembered watching.
She remembered not caring.
By nightfall, she was home again.
The rain had started again — soft, hypnotic.
Lena lit a candle and sat in front of the mirror.
Her reflection looked tired. Pale. But sharper now.
More honest.
"You knew they were going to get rid of you," it said.
"So you gave them something to bury instead."
Lena nodded.
"I didn't want to die. That doesn't make me a monster."
"No," the reflection said.
"But it makes you dangerous."
Her phone buzzed.
One message.
Unknown Number:
"You were at the cottage. I hope you found what you needed."
She stared at it.
Then deleted it.
She already knew who sent it.
Voss.
She opened her journal.
Wrote without hesitation:
I did it because I wanted to live.
I did it because they wouldn't let me.
I did it because I was born like this.
She turned to a fresh page.
And wrote a single name:
Voss.
Lena had always known when someone was watching her.
It was instinct — not just paranoia. A tension in the air, like a piano string wound too tight. It had been with her since childhood, long before the fire, before the first secret she'd ever buried.
Now, that tension was back.
Only this time, it had a name.
Detective Alina Voss.
Voss had been careful. No direct confrontation. No charges. Just shadows and silence, polite visits and folded arms.
But her eyes — they were hungry. Not like the others. Not like Dr. Rowe, who wanted to fix her. Voss didn't want to heal anything.
She wanted to catch a monster.
And Lena couldn't let that happen.