“Who is ‘they’?” Grant asked, stepping closer.

Miles squeezed his eyes shut like a child.

“Tessa,” he blurted. “Tessa Carroway.”

Grant felt the room tilt.

Tessa—Serena’s former business partner, her college friend, the woman who had smiled at their wedding and toasted to their happiness. Their boutique venture had failed years ago, and Tessa had blamed Serena ever since, claiming Serena “didn’t have to take anything seriously because she married rich.”

Grant had dismissed it as bitterness.

Now bitterness had teeth.

On the cabin table, Kade found a notebook.

It was Serena’s journal.

Grant opened it with trembling hands and read words written in the dark, words that still sounded like her voice.

Day 45. She tells me you’ve already replaced me. She says the world moved on. But I saw a bird on the ledge today. If it can still fly, then I can still hold on. I won’t let her make me small.

Grant’s eyes blurred.

His wife had been fighting quietly, stubbornly, bravely, even when no one knew to look.

Miles confessed that after the casket scandal, Tessa panicked and moved Serena again—somewhere “in plain sight,” because she believed nobody would search there.

Grant didn’t care about clever anymore.

He cared about getting Serena back.

The Note That Changed Everything

Tessa hid Serena in an unfinished luxury high-rise downtown—bare concrete, exposed pipes, construction noise covering everything.

But Tessa made one mistake: she underestimated Serena’s will.