He ignores that. “All I have to do is tell him that you’re in danger and he’ll pick up this entire house as is and move it to Iceland.”

It’s a pretty funny mental picture, I have to admit. My lips quirk. “Even people in Iceland are entitled to mail. Can I have my letter now?”

“No.” He scowls. “It could be dangerous.”

I eye the letter with more doubt than suspicion. It’s one of those document mailers made of thin cardboard—and definitely flat. “Is there a bomb in there? Ooh, I know. A rocket launcher.”

Luca is over six feet of brawn and tattoos and experienced malevolence. And he sticks his tongue out at me. “I’m calling Ivan. He’ll definitely want to open it first.”

“What. An. Ass.”

He returns to the living room to grab his phone off the floor. The entire time he holds the envelope over his head, knowing I’ll go for it if I get the chance.

“It’s me,” he says, his voice low and serious. “Some kind of letter showed up for Candy. Yeah, she had to sign for it.”

He’s distracted. This is my chance.

I hop onto the sofa arm, and as he’s turning around to spot me, I snatch the envelope from his hand. He swears under his breath as he lunges for me. The lamp crashes to the floor, but I’m already halfway up the stairs. Luca turned into my surrogate big brother for the year that I lived here—which means I’m fast on my feet. I bypass my own room, which does not have a lock on it, and race to the third floor.

The third floor, which I had always avoided before. Now I know exactly which room is Ivan’s, and I know it has a lock. I close myself in and turn the key.

Luca bangs on the door. “Let me in. Now.”

“How about no?” Okay, so maybe I’m taunting a little. It’s not very often I get to best him.

“This isn’t a game. Open the door.”

“Of course it’s not a game,” I call through the door. “I know why you don’t want me to open it. But it’s my letter, and I’m opening it.”

“I will tear down this fucking door,” he yells.

“Good luck with that,” I mutter. I have no doubt the lock is steel enforced or something equally ridiculous. Ivan would have insisted on that. Luca can probably bust inside, but not before I open this letter.

If it’s some creepy note from the person vandalizing the club—or from Leader Allen—I would have shown it to Luca and Ivan. It’s not like I want to protect the bastard sending it. But I want the chance to open it myself. I know they’d never let me. They’d open it for me, dissect every part of it, and only give me the information they want me to see. It’s what they did about the note on my mirror and the one in blood. I’m tired of being in the dark.

Besides, the letter was addressed to me. Candace Rosalie Toussaint. I have lived for years as Candy, just one name, a bastardization of the one my mother gave me. To hear my real name, to see it in typed letters…I can’t ignore the siren call even if it brings me to my death.

There’s a little tab meant to tear open the envelope. I do so and then take a deep breath. Inside is a single type-written sheet of paper and a smaller, regular-sized envelope.

I look at the typed paper first. It’s on some kind of stationery for a lawyer. It looks very official, but I’ve never heard of them. And then I begin to read…

…your mother’s lawyer and the executor of her estate…

…all funds donated to the Church of Harmony Hills…

…she entrusted me with this letter to her only child in the event of her death…

The room had seemed so big before, but it’s closing in on me. I can’t seem to get any air. My hands are trembling as I pick up the envelope.

This one also has the law firm’s name and address in the return label—as if she wrote the note in the office. My full name is scrawled across the front. Candace Rosalia Toussaint. I didn’t see her write that much. There wasn’t exactly a stash of paper and pens in our room. That was reserved for Leader Allen and the elders and the boys in school. I still recognize her handwriting, though. I could never forget. She drew the letters into the dirt when she first taught me to read—or tried. Without any books or practice it never went very far.

Only here, with Ivan, have I learned to understand.

Dear Candace,

If you’re reading this, it means my time as a sinner has come to an end. Don’t be sad for me, because it means I am at peace. I don’t know if this letter will find you or if you will want to read it. Of all the sins I committed in my life, what I did to you is the most unforgivable.

If it is any consolation, I brought you to Harmony Hills believing it was for your own good—that sunshine and grass would do for you what streetlamps and sidewalks had not done for me. I discovered too late that it’s not the bars that make a jail, but the jailor. And wherever the Good Lord sees fit to send me, I will be at peace because I know that you are free.

Her name is signed at the bottom: Rosalie Toussaint.

I slide to the floor, the letter half crumpling in my hand. I can’t take in a full breath, can’t do anything but shake in the middle of the floor, my knees pulled to my chest. Tears make the room blurry, and that’s a relief. I don’t want to see anything. Not even Ivan’s bed and his big sparse room—normally a comfort. Now it just reminds me of how much I’ve lost.

That’s how Luca finds me when he finally busts the door open. I hear wood splinter behind me, but I can’t move. I don’t care. At least he doesn’t try to touch me, either in comfort or anger.

It’s Ivan who does that, when he gets home a few minutes later. Ivan who rips the letter from my hand to read what I could never say aloud. Ivan who drops to his knees next to me to cradle me close.

Chapter Twenty-Three

I think I might black out for a few minutes. Or maybe longer than a few. The sun has set by the time I come awake in Ivan’s arms in the middle of the bed.

“I’ll leave tomorrow morning,” Ivan is telling Luca, who goes to make arrangements.

“Where?” I mumble. I shouldn’t need him. I can’t need him. After reading my mother’s letter, I know that I was right to try to leave here, leave him. But the thought of being away from him right now feels like knives in my skin.

Ivan just gives a short shake of his head, eyes strangely dark. They’re usually a pale gray, like an iceberg floating in the middle of the ocean.

Right now they seem dark, like deep waters.

“Don’t leave,” I whisper. If he leaves now, I’ll have to find a way to leave too. I’d never see him again, and I can’t bear that thought. Not when I’m so raw.

“I have to go.” He presses his mouth to my forehead in a soundless kiss. “This letter proves that someone in Harmony Hills does know where you are. Which makes it a lot more likely that this—” He pauses, and my mind fills in the blank with what he’d say. Fuckhead. Religious nut job. “That this person is involved,” he finishes quietly.

“I’m coming with you.”

“Absolutely not. We’ve discussed this.”

“Ivan, I…I need to go. I wasn’t there for her when she was alive, and now she’s—” My voice breaks, and I force myself to go on. “This is the least I can do for her.”

His eyes turn to ice. “It won’t bring her back.”

My breath shudders in my chest. “I know that.”

It’s the only kind of closure I’ll be able to find. They would have already had the funeral, if the lawyer is just now sending me a letter. Funerals happen quickly at Harmony Hills. I have no idea how she managed to even see a lawyer and get that letter stowed away for me, but that won’t change anything. I won’t ever see her plain wood casket or her unmarked grave. All I’ll ever see is that house, without her in it.