No flowers for the dead - Chapter 37: Chapter 37
You are reading No flowers for the dead, Chapter 37: Chapter 37. Read more chapters of No flowers for the dead.
The envelope was cream-colored, thick, and weathered at the edges—like it had been touched and held too many times without ever being opened.
No return address.
Just Alina’s name in a handwriting she didn’t recognize.
She found it wedged between two books on Elias’s old study shelf, beneath a stack of dusty legal files he never cared much for. She stared at it for a long time before sitting down at his desk—the same desk where he’d once whispered secrets into her skin and drafted the kind of contracts that changed entire industries.
The seal cracked with a soft sigh.
And the letter, penned in blue ink, began like a story that had waited too long to be told.
Alina,
If you’re reading this, then he didn’t get the chance to send it.
And that means he never told you about me.
I’m not writing to ruin anything. I just… I promised I would try one last time to reach out. For myself. For the truth.
My name is Lisette. I knew Elias before you did. Not as the man the world would come to worship, but as the boy who first learned how to run from everything he felt.
He loved you, Alina. I know that. I saw it in the way he stopped writing me back.
But I also know that not every part of him came clean into your hands.
There was a child. A mistake. A secret.
Not one he meant to hide forever—only until he could find the words.
Her name is Rae.
And she has his eyes.
⸻
Alina didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t tear the letter apart.
She simply folded it once more, carefully, as if it were made of something delicate and holy.
And then she sat there in Elias’s chair and closed her eyes.
The ache in her chest was not betrayal.
It was the weight of knowing more about someone she’d already given everything to. The weight of realizing that even in love—especially in love—there were things we keep locked away.
Not out of malice.
But out of fear.
⸻
Later that night, she pulled out a small notebook and turned to a blank page.
She wrote one name at the top:
Rae.
And beneath it:
If you ever want to know the man your father became, I will tell you everything.
She didn’t know if the letter would ever reach her.
But she knew what Elias would’ve wanted.
Truth.
Even when it arrived too late.
No return address.
Just Alina’s name in a handwriting she didn’t recognize.
She found it wedged between two books on Elias’s old study shelf, beneath a stack of dusty legal files he never cared much for. She stared at it for a long time before sitting down at his desk—the same desk where he’d once whispered secrets into her skin and drafted the kind of contracts that changed entire industries.
The seal cracked with a soft sigh.
And the letter, penned in blue ink, began like a story that had waited too long to be told.
Alina,
If you’re reading this, then he didn’t get the chance to send it.
And that means he never told you about me.
I’m not writing to ruin anything. I just… I promised I would try one last time to reach out. For myself. For the truth.
My name is Lisette. I knew Elias before you did. Not as the man the world would come to worship, but as the boy who first learned how to run from everything he felt.
He loved you, Alina. I know that. I saw it in the way he stopped writing me back.
But I also know that not every part of him came clean into your hands.
There was a child. A mistake. A secret.
Not one he meant to hide forever—only until he could find the words.
Her name is Rae.
And she has his eyes.
⸻
Alina didn’t cry.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t tear the letter apart.
She simply folded it once more, carefully, as if it were made of something delicate and holy.
And then she sat there in Elias’s chair and closed her eyes.
The ache in her chest was not betrayal.
It was the weight of knowing more about someone she’d already given everything to. The weight of realizing that even in love—especially in love—there were things we keep locked away.
Not out of malice.
But out of fear.
⸻
Later that night, she pulled out a small notebook and turned to a blank page.
She wrote one name at the top:
Rae.
And beneath it:
If you ever want to know the man your father became, I will tell you everything.
She didn’t know if the letter would ever reach her.
But she knew what Elias would’ve wanted.
Truth.
Even when it arrived too late.
End of No flowers for the dead Chapter 37. Continue reading Chapter 38 or return to No flowers for the dead book page.