ARIA'S POVI stared at the envelope for two hours before I found the courage to open it.
The house remained silent around me, but the silence felt different now—watchful, waiting. Every creak of the old walls made my pulse spike. Every distant car engine might be Tom coming home. I sat cross-legged on my bed with the door locked, the envelope resting in my lap like something alive, something dangerous.
The handwriting on the front was precise, almost surgical. Aria Summer. Not Mrs. Vager. Not my married name. Just the girl I used to be, before everything changed.
My fingers trembled as I slid them under the sealed flap. The glue gave way with a soft tearing sound that seemed too loud in the quiet room. Inside, I found three things.
A letter. A USB drive. And a photograph.
I pulled out the photograph first because it was on top, because my hands moved before my brain could stop them. The image was recent—maybe ten years old at most. The colors were still vibrant, the edges sharp and crisp. It showed two people standing outside a building I didn't recognize—a modern structure, all glass and steel.
My mother stood on the left, looking almost exactly as I remembered her from my teenage years. Her hair was the same length, her face only slightly younger, and she was smiling in a way that made my stomach turn. Not the gentle, tired smile she gave me. This was different. Calculating. Triumphant.
The man beside her had his arm around her shoulders.
I stopped breathing.
I knew that building. I'd seen it just hours ago, lit up against the night sky, every window glowing with cold fluorescent light.
The hospital.
But it was the man that made my hands shake so badly I nearly dropped the photograph. I didn't know his face well, but I recognized the white coat he wore, the stethoscope around his neck, the ID badge clipped to his pocket.
Dr. Jackson.
And he was looking at my mother the way a man looks at a woman he's completely entangled with—not quite love, but something deeper and more dangerous. Complicity.
I set the photograph aside carefully, my mind racing. My mother and Dr. Jackson. Together. Ten years ago. Long enough to plan something. Long enough to build something terrible.
What does this mean?
The letter came next. I unfolded it with careful fingers, and Dr. Jackson's precise handwriting filled the page.
Dear Aria,
If you're reading this, then you've started asking the right questions. I'm sorry it took you this long. I'm still that I couldn't tell you the truth myself.
Your mother made me promise. She made me swear on everything I held sacred that I would never tell you, never give you any reason to doubt the story she'd built. For years, I kept that promise. I watched you suffer, watched you believe lies, and I said nothing because I was weak, and because she had leverage over me that I couldn't escape.
But I can't keep silent anymore. Not after what she's done.
The medical records are fake. Every test result, every scan, every doctor's note—fabricated. Your mother was never sick. There was no stage four cancer. There was no experimental treatment. The fifteen million dollars your husband paid went exactly where your mother planned it to go—into accounts I helped her set up, into investments I helped her hide, into a new life I helped her build.
I was supposed to take my percentage for my part in the deception. I refused it. The guilt was eating me alive, and I couldn't—I wouldn't—profit from what we'd done to you. To him. I don't want it. I never wanted it.
But there's something worse, Aria. Something I need you to understand before you judge me too harshly, though I deserve every bit of your hatred.
Seven years ago, your mother came to me with a request. She needed a sedative—something strong, fast-acting, something that would render a person unconscious for several hours with no memory of what happened. She told me it was for herself, for her anxiety, for nights when she couldn't sleep. I was young, stupid, and already half in love with her. So I gave it to her.
It wasn't until last week, when she was laughing about how well it had worked seven years ago—that I understood what I'd done.
She used that sedative, Aria. The one I gave her. Seven years ago.
She didn't tell me on who. She didn't tell me why. But the way she smiled when she mentioned it, the way she touched the empty vial like it was a trophy—I knew. I knew it was connected to you.
And I knew I had helped her do something unforgivable.
I've included everything on the USB drive. Bank statements showing where the fifteen million went. Copies of the falsified medical records alongside the real ones showing she was perfectly healthy. And most importantly—prescription records showing the date I provided her with that sedative.
Your mother is not the woman you think she is, Aria. She's brilliant, ruthless, and she's been planning this for longer than either of us can imagine. And whatever she's done, whatever she's still planning—I helped her do it.
I'm leaving the country tonight. By the time you read this, I'll be gone. They'll call me a coward, and they'll be right. But I've seen what happens to people who get in her way, and I'm not brave enough to face her. I'm not brave enough to face you.
The money is yours if you want it. The evidence is yours to use however you see fit. And the truth—whatever pieces of it I can give you—is in your hands now.
I'm sorry, Aria. I'm so desperately sorry.
But sorry won't undo what's been done.
Trust no one. Especially not the people closest to you. Your mother taught me that lesson too late.
—Dr. Michael Jackson
The letter slipped from my fingers.
I couldn't breathe. Couldn't think. The words swam before my eyes, rearranging themselves into patterns I didn't want to see.
A sedative. Seven years ago.
She used it on someone.
Connected to you.
My mind raced backward, trying to find the connection, trying to understand. Seven years ago, I would have been sixteen. Still in high school. Still living in my mother's small house on Maple Street, where she watched me like a hawk, where she controlled every aspect of my life.
My chest hurt like something had cracked open inside me.
I pressed the USB drive to my palm, then set it on the bed as if it might burn me. My eyes moved back to the photograph. My mother's smile. Dr. Jackson's arm around her. The ease of it. The comfort. The planning behind it.
This wasn't panic.
This wasn't desperation.
This was control.
I opened the USB drive with shaking hands and slid it into my laptop. Folders filled the screen. Bank transfers. Account numbers. Dates. Names. Everything neat. Everything deliberate.
Fifteen million dollars. Broken into pieces. Moved slowly. Carefully. Hidden well.
I scrolled further.
Prescription records.
A sedative.
Issued seven years ago.
My throat closed.
I stared at the date until the numbers blurred. My heartbeat roared in my ears. Seven years ago. The same year. The same night the photos Tom had received were taken. The ones showing me unconscious in a hotel room. The ones I had no memory of, no explanation for.
I pushed the laptop away and folded over, hugging myself as if my arms could hold me together.
She hadn't protected me.
She hadn't saved me.
She had used me.
Tears slid down my face, silent and hot, dripping onto the floor. Every memory replayed with new meaning. Every rule. Every locked door. Every time she told me I was too young, too fragile, too naive to understand the world.
She had already decided my life for me.
I pressed my hand over my mouth to stop a sound from escaping. The betrayal was too big. Too heavy. It crushed my chest, stole my breath, made my hands shake like I was falling apart from the inside out.
Why would a mother do this to her own child?
I wiped my face slowly, my hands still trembling.
For a moment, I just sat there, hollow and scraped raw, then something shifted inside me.
The tears stopped. My hands steadied.
And beneath the grief, beneath the betrayal—something harder took shape. Anger. Cold. Sharp. Clarifying.
My mother had used me. Lied to me. Manipulated every moment of my life but she'd made one mistake, she'd left me the evidence and I was going to use it.
I pulled the laptop closer and opened another folder.
I would find out why she did this.
And when I had all the answers—when I understood exactly what game she was playing—
I was going to make her regret ever using me as a pawn.