It started with a smell.
Burnt pine. The kind her childhood house used to smell like on cold nights when her father lit the fireplace.
She was standing in Sophie's kitchen when it hit her.
And suddenly—she wasn't there anymore.
She was eight years old, in her parents' room, holding her mother's necklace. Her little hands were trembling. There was shouting downstairs—two voices, not one. She peeked through the cracked door…
There were two men.
Not one.
Alina stumbled back from the memory, her coffee cup crashing to the floor.
Sophie rushed in, "Are you okay?"
Alina couldn't breathe. "There… there was someone else there that night."
Sophie froze. "What do you mean?"
Alina's voice was shaking. "The man who attacked me—he wasn't alone. There was another man. He stayed back, in the shadows. Watching."
---
Later that night, she told Leo and Ethan everything.
The memory. The necklace. The man she couldn't fully see—but who felt familiar in a way she couldn't explain.
Ethan's face had gone pale. "Do you think… he's still out there?"
Leo's jaw clenched. "If he is, we'll find him."
But deep inside, Alina wasn't just scared—she was curious.
Because in that flashback, just before her father died, she remembered him whispering something to the man in the shadows:
"You were like a brother to me. Why would you do this?"
Alina looked up at Ethan.
"We've been wrong this whole time," she whispered. "That night wasn't just random violence."
She stood, eyes wide with something new: determination.
"There's still more to the story. And I'm going to find out the truth."