Chapter 40 The Past

• The voice that sliced through the stillness didn’t belong to Damien.
• It was colder. Familiar in a way that scraped against the back of Ivy’s mind, a memory trying to surface but buried beneath years of silence and the weight of trauma. She sat up rigidly on the leather couch, the blanket falling away from her lap. The window was wide open, the curtains fluttering like ghostly hands in the breeze.
• And in the shadows, just to the left of the frame where the lamplight ended, stood a man.