Blackwood seems different when we return, or maybe I'm just seeing it clearly for the first time. Every shadow could hide a threat, every friendly face could mask Theodore's loyalty.
"Who can we trust?" I ask as we enter our quarters.
"Each other," Vlad says immediately. "Beyond that, I don't know."
Eduardo appears, looking grim. "Sir, we have a problem. Several staff members have disappeared since news of Theodore's death broke. Including Dr. Brennan from the medical wing."
Dr. Brennan—who's been treating me since the stabbing. Who's had access to my medical records, my medication, everything.
"The pregnancy," I gasp. "Julia warned me—"
Richard appears, out of breath from running. "Don't take any more of the prenatal vitamins Brennan prescribed. I had them tested after Julia's warning. They're contaminated."
"With what?"
"Memory modification drugs. Low-dose, subtle, but continuous exposure would slowly erode your recovered memories."
Even dead, Theodore is trying to steal my mind.
"How many people?" Vlad demands. "How many of the staff were his?"
"We're still determining that," Eduardo admits. "But sir, there's something else. Clara's cousin—Matthew Hendricks—he's here."
Vlad goes rigid. "That's impossible. He lives in London."
"He arrived this morning, claiming to be investigating Clara's death for closure. He's demanding to speak with you."
Clara. Even now, years later, her ghost haunts these halls.
"Don't see him," I say immediately. "It's a trap."
"Everything's a trap," Vlad says tiredly. "But if he has information about Clara's death, about Theodore's involvement—"
"Then he's dangerous."
But Vlad's already decided. Within an hour, Matthew Hendricks is in Vlad's office, and I'm watching through Leo's surveillance setup because of course Leo has cameras everywhere.
Matthew looks nothing like Clara—where she was delicate, he's sharp-edged and calculating. But they share the same predatory grace.
"David," he greets coldly. "You look well for a man whose father just died in prison."
"Theodore stopped being my father years ago."
"Did he? Blood is blood, after all." Matthew pulls out a folder. "Clara left me something before she died. Instructions to only open it if something happened to her."
"And you're just now opening it? Three years later?"
"I was waiting for the right moment. Theodore's death seemed... appropriate."
He spreads photos across the desk—Clara with various men, Clara accessing files, Clara photographing documents.
"Your fiancée was investigating your family long before she died," Matthew says. "She discovered Willowbrook, the memory modifications, all of it. She was going to expose everything."
"So Theodore had her killed."
"No." Matthew's smile is sharp. "Clara wasn't killed because she found out. She was killed because she was part of it."
The words don't make sense. I see Vlad struggling to process them.
"Clara worked for Theodore," Matthew continues. "She was supposed to seduce you, marry into the family, keep you controlled. But she made a mistake—she actually fell in love with you. Started having doubts. Theodore couldn't risk her turning against him."
"You're lying."
"Am I?" Matthew produces more documents. "Payment records. Theodore paid for Clara's education, her apartment, everything. She was groomed from age sixteen to be your perfect match."
I watch Vlad crumble in real-time through the screen. Every relationship in his life—tainted, orchestrated, false.
"Why tell me this now?" Vlad asks, voice hollow.
"Because Theodore's dead and someone needs to pay for Clara's death. If not him, then his heir."
"Devon's seven years old—"
"Not the boy. You. You inherit Theodore's sins along with his empire." Matthew stands. "I'll be in touch about compensation. Clara's family deserves justice."
After he leaves, Vlad sits in broken silence until I can't stand it anymore. I go to him, my own trauma temporarily forgotten in the face of his devastation.
"Everything in my life was a lie," he says when I enter. "Even before you. Clara, the woman I mourned for three years, was another of Theodore's manipulations."
"You loved her. That was real."
"Was it? Or did I love what Theodore designed me to love?"
I think about my constructed memories, about loving the fiction of a father who died of a heart attack versus the truth of one murdered in front of me.
"The feelings were real even if the circumstances were false," I say, repeating what Dr. Winters told me.
"Were your feelings for me real? That night at the party?"
"I don't know," I admit. "I was traumatized, possibly triggered by being in that house. You were broken from nearly killing Thomas. Were any of our choices really choices?"
"Devon was."
"Devon was an accident—"
"Devon was a miracle. The only real thing in all of this manipulation."
As if summoned, Devon appears with Leo. "Mom, Dad, we have another problem."
"Of course we do," Vlad mutters.
"Some students are leaving," Devon reports. "Their parents don't want them at a school associated with Theodore's crimes. Enrollment for next term is down sixty percent."
"Blackwood is dying," Leo adds bluntly. "Without students, without funding—"
"We have the money from my father," I say. "The evidence that could recover the stolen funds."
"Blood money," Vlad says bitterly.
"Justice money. Money that should have been ours anyway."
"Using it makes us no better than Theodore."
"Using it to save the school, to help victims, to transform this place—that makes us exactly better than Theodore."
Before we can argue further, Genesis bursts in. "Has anyone seen Dr. Winters?"
"She had a session with Devon an hour ago," I say.
"No, she didn't," Devon says. "She never showed up."
Another disappearance. Another betrayal?
"She was Theodore's, wasn't she?" I say, the realization hitting like cold water. "Our therapist, the one person we trusted with everything—"
"We don't know that," Vlad says, but doubt colors his voice.
Leo's already pulling up security footage. "Her car left campus forty minutes ago. Passenger seat had luggage."
"She ran."
"Or was taken," Richard suggests, ever the optimist.
But I know better. The woman who's been inside our heads, who knows our deepest fears and traumas—she's been reporting to Theodore all along.
"How many more?" I ask the room. "How many more people in our lives are secretly his?"
No one has an answer.