The room tilted. The air felt thinner with every breath.
Grace stared at Ethan, words colliding in her chest like glass.
"What do you mean I wasn't supposed to remember?"
Ethan's jaw worked soundlessly for a moment before he finally said, "Mark wanted to protect you from something that happened long before any of this. Before him. Before Mia left home."
Grace blinked, trying to gather the fragments of sense that kept slipping through her grasp. "Protect me from what?"
He hesitated. "From the truth."
She laughed — a brittle, empty sound. "You sound like Daniel now."
"Because he was part of it," Ethan said. "Mark told me once, after too much whiskey. He said if you ever started asking questions again, it meant the therapy didn't hold."
Grace's knees gave way. She sat down on the couch, her hands shaking uncontrollably. "What therapy?"
"The sessions you had years ago — the ones you said were for anxiety. They weren't. Daniel arranged them. He wasn't just Mark's business partner — he funded the clinic."
Grace's throat tightened. She remembered faint rooms that smelled of antiseptic and lavender, long talks with a doctor whose name she could never quite remember. Dr. Elara? Or Eleanor? Something with an E. She remembered signing forms she didn't read. Remembered leaving lighter, emptier — as if pieces of her had been lifted quietly away.
Her chest constricted. "What did they make me forget?"
Ethan's eyes darkened. "Your sister."
Grace flinched. "Mia?"
He nodded. "Something happened when you two were teenagers. Something Mark found out years later. He believed that remembering it would destroy you. So he—" Ethan stopped himself, guilt written across his face. "He let Daniel handle it."
Grace pressed her palms to her temples, the edges of memory beginning to flicker — a dim hallway, a broken picture frame, the sound of crying that wasn't hers.
"I don't believe you," she whispered.
"You don't have to," Ethan said quietly. "But the truth is buried in that clinic's files. You deserve to see it."
Her gaze snapped up to him. "Then take me there."
Ethan hesitated. "It's not that simple. The clinic was shut down two years ago. Records seized. But I know someone who still has access — one of the doctors who quit before it all fell apart."
"Then find them," Grace said. Her voice trembled, but it carried steel. "I'm done being protected."
Ethan nodded. "I'll make some calls."
She stood, walking toward the window. Outside, the city lights glittered, each one a lie waiting to be uncovered. In her reflection, she saw her own face and, for a heartbeat, another — Mia's — overlapping hers like a ghost trapped in the glass.
"I used to think she was my mirror," Grace whispered. "Maybe she still is. Maybe she's the reflection of everything I wasn't allowed to see."
Ethan didn't respond. He just watched her — the woman who had been broken and rebuilt too many times to count.
When Grace turned back, her decision was made. "If Daniel and Mark thought I'd stay quiet, they were wrong. I want every memory they stole from me."
Her phone buzzed on the table. A new message.
Unknown Number: If you go digging, dig fast. The mirror cracks soon.
She looked up at Ethan. "It's him again."
He frowned. "Whoever that is — they're watching."
Grace pocketed the phone. "Then let them watch," she said. "This time, I'll give them a show."