Part 2: Blood in the Margins
The first thing Anika did when she reached home was lock the door.
She didn’t know why—only that her hands moved on instinct, sliding the bolt shut, checking it twice. The apartment felt smaller than usual, the silence pressing in on her ears. She placed the adoption file on her dining table like it was evidence from a crime scene.
She turned on every light.
The photograph lay in the center, the scratched-out face staring back at her. Whoever had done it hadn’t wanted to erase the man—only to punish him. The scratches were violent, repeated, almost frantic.
Anika flipped the photo over again.
“She must never know.”
Who was she?
Her fingers moved back to the file. This time she read it like a detective, not a daughter searching for comfort. She noticed things she had ignored earlier—dates that didn’t align, signatures that changed handwriting mid-name, and a section titled “Additional Notes” that had been deliberately blacked out.
Someone had edited her life.
At the very bottom of one page, hidden near the binding, was a faint smudge. Anika tilted the paper toward the light. It wasn’t a stain—it was writing, pressed so hard it had etched into the page beneath.
She grabbed a pencil and shaded over it gently.
Letters emerged.
“…found near the body.”
Her stomach twisted.
Near which body?
Anika’s phone buzzed suddenly, the sound sharp in the quiet room. She nearly dropped the pencil.
Unknown Number
She stared at the screen, heart hammering.
She didn’t answer.
The phone stopped vibrating. A second later, a message appeared.
Stop digging.
Her throat went dry.
Another message followed.
Your parents are dead for a reason.
Anika backed away from the table, her legs weak. She looked toward the door, half-expecting the handle to turn.
“Who are you?” she whispered, though she knew there would be no answer.
She forced herself to breathe. Panic would get her killed faster than ignorance ever had.
She opened her laptop and typed in the police case number from the file. The result shocked her—not because it existed, but because it didn’t.
No records found.
She tried again. Different spellings. Different years.
Nothing.
Then she noticed something else: the number itself didn’t follow standard police formatting. It was too long. Too precise.
It wasn’t a case number.
It was a location coordinate.
Anika copied it into a map.
The screen zoomed in on a place just outside the city—a stretch of abandoned land near an old textile mill that had burned down decades ago. The map labeled it with two simple words:
Rao Industrial Estate
Her breath caught painfully.
Rao.
Her adoptive surname.
A sound came from behind her.
A soft click.
Anika turned slowly toward the hallway.
Her bedroom door, which she was certain she had closed, was now open—just an inch. Darkness spilled out from the gap like ink.
Her phone buzzed again.
Last warning.
At that exact moment, the power went out.
The lights died.
The fan fell silent.
And in the sudden darkness, Anika realized something far worse than the messages.
She was not uncovering a cold case.
The killer was still watching.
And he knew exactly where she lived.
