CHAPTER 412: THE TRUTH

The world narrowed to a single, devastating point.

Tall heels, sharp enough to puncture the quiet of the street. Expensive perfume, a cloud of jasmine and ozone that cut through the city grime. A designer coat, tailored and severe. And hair... a violent, brilliant slash of red against the dull, washed-out sky.

My heart didn’t just stop. It froze solid in my chest, a block of ice.

Ashlyn.

For one fractured second, pure animal instinct took over... run, hide, disappear. But my feet were rooted to the pavement. The landlord looked up, a bland, friendly smile on his face.

"Ah, Aria dear!"

The sound of my name was a death knell.

The woman turned.

And there she was. Ash. Her presence was too large, too vivid for this gray world. Her sunglasses were pushed into that fiery hair, and her mouth fell open, a perfect O of shock as her eyes, wide and disbelieving, locked onto me.

Then she was moving.

She didn’t walk. She ran. A force of nature in stilettos.

"ARIA!"

My name shattered on her lips, a sound torn between a scream and a sob.

She crashed into me, her arms wrapping around my body with a force that expelled all the air from my lungs. We stumbled, a tangle of limbs and expensive wool, collapsing onto the hard concrete. The impact jarred my teeth. I felt the rough grit of the pavement through my jeans. Her laughter was a wild, broken thing, mingling with the tears she was smearing against my neck.

"Oh my God—oh my God, I found you! I actually found you!"

"Ash—" I gasped, my voice a strangled whisper. I pushed weakly at her shoulders. "I can’t—breathe—"

She recoiled instantly, scrambling back, her hands fluttering over me. "Shit, sorry! I’m sorry—Jesus, are you okay? Did I hurt you?"

She hauled me to my feet, her grip surprisingly strong and steady. I swayed, the world tilting on its axis... dizzy from the fall, dizzy from the overwhelming, impossible reality of her being here.

Then her hands came up, cradling my face. They were trembling. Her eyes, those sharp, knowing eyes, scanned every feature... the hollows under my eyes, the pallor of my skin, the new fragility in my frame, as if committing me to memory, as if verifying I wasn’t a mirage.

"It’s really you," she whispered, her voice thick with an emotion I couldn’t name. "Jesus Christ, Aria—it’s really you."

Something deep inside me twisted, a complicated knot of relief, shock, and a guilt so suffocating it felt like sickness.

I had no words. My throat had sealed shut.

Ash slipped her arm through mine, a firm, unyielding tether to the present. "Come on," she said, her tone leaving no room for argument, yet softened at the edges by a concern that undid me. "Let’s go inside. We need to talk."

And just like that, I let her lead me. Back into the dim hallway, up the stairs, toward the small, shabby apartment that had been my refuge. Back toward the quiet, the warmth, and whatever brutal, undeniable truth had finally come to hunt me down.

My apartment, which usually felt like a cavern of silence, suddenly felt claustrophobic. Ash filled the space, her perfume a foreign scent, her presence a loud, colorful intrusion in my monochrome world.

She sat on a chair, a rickety thing I’d found on the curb, and her gaze swept the bare walls, the chipped paint, the single bare bulb. It wasn’t judgment in her eyes, but a kind of pained disbelief, a silent acknowledgment of a depth of fall she hadn’t quite imagined.

I handed her a glass of tap water. She took it, and I watched the surface tremble, a tiny earthquake in her grasp.

"Thanks," she said finally, taking a small sip. Her coral lipstick left a perfect, waxy crescent on the rim. She set the glass down on the floor beside her. "So. How are you doing?"

"I’m fine." The lie was automatic, a brittle shell.

Ash didn’t even acknowledge it. She just looked at me, her gaze a weight, until I had to look away, down at my own hands, at the ragged cuticles I’d been picking at for weeks. The pity in her silence was a more devastating question than any she could have spoken aloud.

"Ash, I’m so sorry," I began again, the words rushing out in a desperate stream. "For vanishing. For not calling. I just... I had to..."

"Stop."

Her voice was quiet, but it had the finality of a slamming door. She lifted a hand. "I didn’t cross the city and interrogate every landlord in this district for an apology."

"But—"

"I understand why you left." She leaned back, the gold bangles on her wrist clinking softly.

"You needed space. You needed to get away from the... the carnage. And I’m sorry for hunting you. I know you wanted to be alone." Her voice wavered, just for a second. "But I couldn’t do it, Aria. I’ve been out of my mind."

Something in the careful, raw honesty of her confession broke a dam inside me. A hot pressure built behind my eyes, a stinging warning of tears I could not afford to shed. I blinked rapidly, swallowing against the tightness in my throat. "How have you been?" I asked, my voice rough. "And Olivia? Are the kids—"

"We’re okay. Olivia’s managing. The kids are... kids." She hesitated, a deliberate pause that hung in the air between us. "Do you want to know about—"

"No."

The word shot out of me, sharp and fast as a bullet. Her eyes widened, a flicker of shock crossing her features before she could mask it.

"I don’t want to know," I repeated, softer now, the plea evident. "Please."

She nodded slowly, her lips pressing into a thin, understanding line. "Okay."

The silence that descended then was thick and suffocating. It pressed in from all sides, filled with everything we weren’t saying.

Ash was the one to shatter it. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, her expression shifting into something darker, more intent. "I came here for another reason, Aria."

My stomach plunged. "Is it Kael? Did Kael send you?"

Her lips curved into a smile that held no warmth.

"You insult me," she said, though the words lacked their usual bite, replaced by a deep weariness. "You should know by now I don’t run errands for men. I was raised by people who use money as a weapon. I’ve learned to wield my own."

"I’m sorry," I whispered, the apology feeling inadequate. "I didn’t mean—"

"I know." Her tone softened, the steel melting into something closer to sorrow. "And I understand your pain. I really, really do." She let that hang in the air for a long moment, a heavy prelude. "That’s exactly why you need to know the truth. The whole truth."

"The truth?" The word felt foreign on my tongue.

Ash reached into her bag...a buttery leather piece that looked absurdly out of place in the shabbiness of my life and pulled out a thick, well-worn file, bound with a simple black elastic band. The sound it made as she dropped it onto the low table between us was a dull, final thud.

She slid it toward me.

"I’ve always had my suspicions about Sarah," she said, her voice low and steady, her gaze fixed on the folder as if it were a live thing. "But I kept them to myself. Because she was your person. And I thought... maybe I was just being cynical." Her jaw tightened, a muscle feathering. "But now... there’s proof. It’s not the whole story, not yet. But it’s enough. Enough to show you who she really is."

I stared at the plain manila folder. It looked innocuous. It looked like death.

"What is this?" My voice was a ghost of a sound.

"Open it," Ash urged, her voice barely above a whisper. It was a challenge, and a mercy. "See for yourself."

My hands were shaking as I reached for it. The paper was cool, impersonal. Even before my fingers touched the elastic, I knew... with a certainty that turned my blood to ice... that whatever was inside would not just change things. It would obliterate them.

I slid the band off. The file fell open.

The first thing I saw was the header, bold and bureaucratic: CRIMINAL CASE FILE — HOMICIDE INVESTIGATION

My breath hitched, stuck in my constricting throat. My eyes moved over the text mechanically,not reading, just absorbing the stark, terrible words... victim name, date of death, location until the letters blurred into a gray smear. My hand, moving on its own, turned the page.

And my world stopped.

The photographs. They were clinical,taken under harsh, flash-lit conditions. But there was nothing clinical about the horror they depicted.

A body. Or what had been a body. Dismembered.Systematically. Limbs severed from the torso. The head,separated. It was a jigsaw puzzle of a person,arranged on a cold, concrete floor.

My stomach lurched, a violent, acidic wave rising. I swallowed it back down, my throat burning. I forced myself to look, to see. My mind, detached and horrifyingly logical, began to connect the details... the date, the location, the name.

Cain Matthews.

Sarah’s college boyfriend. The one whose death had shattered her.

I remembered the campus blanketed in a pall of fear. The news vans. The arrest of a homeless man, his tear-stained confession splashed across the front page. The tragedy that had hollowed her out for months. I had held her for hours as she wept.I had felt her grief shake through both of us. I had watched her mourn the boy she claimed was her love.

Or so I had believed.

My voice was a ragged tear in the silence. "What does this mean?"

Ash didn’t answer right away. She leaned in, her expression grave, as if measuring the weight of the words she was about to release.

"The truth is..." she said, each word deliberate. "The man who confessed... it’s almost certain he was paid to take the fall. Someone else did this."

The air in the room solidified. I couldn’t draw a breath. I understood perfectly the implication.

"No," I whispered, my head shaking slowly, a useless, denial. "No. Sarah would never—she couldn’t—"

"Aria—"

"She loved him!" The cry was torn from a place of pure, helpless anguish. "I saw her! I was at the funeral with her! Don’t you dare tell me she—"

Ash’s face didn’t change. She had been waiting for this. She had known this would be the wall she’d have to break through.

Without a word, she reopened the file, her movements efficient. She flipped past the horrific photos, found a different section, and slid a few sheets of paper toward me. Printed screenshots of text messages. A group chat.

"Look at this."

I looked down. And I read. Line by line,message by message, the splinters inside me became a full-scale collapse.