Chapter 2: What Was in the Bottle
Luca didn't speak for a full ten seconds.
Then his voice came back — lower, careful, stripped of all that earlier bluster.
"Jessi.
Listen to me.
That account is not what you think it is.
Just come home and we can talk about this like adults."
*Like adults.* The man who locked our five-year-old in the dark wanted to talk like adults.
"There's nothing to talk about, Luca."
I ended the call.
Fiona had fallen back asleep against her car seat, her little fingers still curled tight around mine.
I sat there watching her breathe, and that's when I remembered the guest room.
I had walked through it before I left the house.
I told myself I was just grabbing Fiona's jacket.
But something had stopped me cold near the bedside table.
A prescription bottle.
Not Chloe's name on the label.
Not Luca's either.
*Mine.*
My name.
My doctor.
But I had never been prescribed that medication.
Not once.
I pulled out my phone and searched the drug name with shaking hands.
The results came up immediately.
It was used to cause confusion, fatigue, and memory loss in low, repeated doses.
I sat completely still.
All those months of exhaustion I blamed on double shifts.
The brain fog I thought was burnout.
The mornings I couldn't remember the night before.
It wasn't the job.
Then my phone lit up.
A text from a number I didn't recognize.
*"Jessi.
May you like
There's something else in that safe you need to see.
Don't let him near it first."*
