What Lies In Silence

Chapter Seven: What Lies in the Silence

Isabelle never believed her father's words.

James used to say that the best way to destroy your enemy was to love them.

Isabelle never believed that…Not even once…Not even as a child when she wanted to believe in everything her father said. 

Loving your enemy never destroyed them, but it only gave them more power. It let them get close enough to break you in ways strangers never could.

Reign Kraus was her enemy. He always had been. And now, he was standing beside her every day like a permanent curse she couldn't erase.

He walked through the world as if no one else existed. He never glanced at her unless he had to. 

Never spoke unless it was necessary. To him, she was nothing more than a problem to be managed, something to be tolerated until it served its purpose.

He didn't notice the way her hands trembled when no one was looking. He didn't hear the way her voice cracked whenever she said her sister's name. 

Reign Kraus continued staying blind to everything that wasn't about power and control.

He didn't admire her…

He didn't study her like someone trying to understand. Reign didn't bother to love her, not even a little.

And she hated him more for it.

The day had been quiet, somehow unnaturally so... The twins were still at the private hospital. 

Reign had insisted they be kept somewhere safe and silent. Somewhere no one could ask questions about where they came from or who they belonged to.

They had agreed to keep the twins a secret. For now…

Issbelle didn't know how she had ended up alone in the massive guest room. She had tried to sleep, but sleep didn't come. 

Grief wrapped around her like a second skin. She sat in the middle of the bed, pulling her knees to her chest, holding a worn photograph between her fingers.

It was one of the few pictures she had with Charlotte. They were laughing, both of them younger, brighter, before everything went wrong. 

Isabelle stared at her sister's face for a long time, her thumb brushed over the image. The silence of the room made everything louder…the thoughts, this crazy painful ache, and the obvious sorrow.

'How could you leave me like this?' Isabelle thought.

The tears came, quiet at first…A few at a time. But once they started, they didn't stop.

She cried for Charlotte. She cried for the years they had lost. For the words they never said. For the apology she never gave.

But her tears weren't going to fix anything.

Charlotte was gone forever…

Their mother had disappeared without a word or a trace…with absolutely no clues or goodbyes. 

Now Charlotte was dead too, her body pulled out of a river like some trash...

Isabelle didn't believe it was suicide. Not for a second. 

Her sister wouldn't have given up…not like that. Not with two children depending on her, and the message that was stating to find out who was the killer. 

There had to be something else… At least for some reason.

Isabelle whispered into the silence. "Why did you ask me to marry him, Charlotte? Why him of all people?"

But unsurprisingly no answer came…

But she needed one. Isabelle needed to know who killed her sister. She needed clues, answers, pieces of this insane mystery she didn't even know how to solve yet.

And she was going to find them, even if it meant living in a house filled with lies. Even if it meant pretending to be the wife of a man who looked at her like a burden.

Her sobs grew louder. She pressed her face into the pillow, trying to muffle the sound.

However, Isabelle didn't know that Reign was standing outside the door.

He had been walking down the hall, about to call one of the security staff, when he heard her crying. And he paused.

Just stayed there like he was paralysed to the spot, and just listened. Reign couldn't move or dared to knock.

Didn't say a word either…

He stared at the closed door as if it held answers he had never dared to ask for.

There was no emotion on his face. But something in his eyes had moved like guilt or something like it.

His brother was dead too. And just like Isabelle, he didn't believe it was an accident.

There was a letter…Reign hadn't stopped thinking about it. 

His brother had written that if anything happened to him, Reign had to marry Isabelle Munro. That was the only way to uncover the truth. That was the only way to keep the twins safe.

But it didn't make sense even then or now.

What had their siblings been involved in?

What had they both known?

Reign leaned a shoulder against the wall and let out a breath. For a second, just a second, he didn't look like the cold-hearted businessman everyone feared. He looked like a lost child in the dark and gloomy city. 

And then, like always, he pulled himself together and walked away.

Back in the room, Isabelle wiped her face. The tears were done. Grief didn't get to steal her every hour.

She wasn't going to fall apart just because life had decided to throw her into a storm without warning.

She had questions. And she was going to find answers. Even if Reign tried to keep them from her.

Even if her own family name made people stare like she was something disgusting.

Isabelle had grown up with power. She had helped build her father's company, had stood in meetings and watched deals close because of her numbers and strategies. She had been valuable once.

Now, people only looked at her like she was a fraud or some burdening liar.

But she wasn't any of those things. Isabelle was a woman who had lost her sister. She was a woman living with a man she hated.

Isabelle was a woman with a spine still made of steel.

Reign Kraus might've thought she was weak.But he was going to learn the truth soon enough.

She wasn't here to survive him or the killer of her sister…Isabelle was here to fight, and protect the two babies her sister left her. 

"The twins! Right! Th-they should remember something…if only I could find a way to get the information, I would-"

*Dum!*

"Who's there?"