The file was missing.

Who could’ve taken it? she wondered, taking short, sharp breaths. Jack had gone home after sneaking into Evelyn’s office, and Raven had no reason to go snooping through Lily’s bedside table. Maybe Stefan had found it by accident. Maybe he’d stopped by to bring her some towels or washcloths or something, and he’d opened that drawer without thinking.

Maybe she could get the file back.

Lily hurried out of her bedroom. She could hear her stepdad shuffling around in the living room below, but if she was very quiet, she could sneak up to the third floor without him knowing. Her feet were silent on the hardwood. She took soft, careful steps on the stairs. Soon, she’d reached the third-floor landing, and then she was passing Raven’s door.

The master bedroom loomed straight ahead. Lily made a beeline for it, her heart thumping. If Stefan had discovered her father’s file, he could use it to make her dad look guilty. Even if her dad wasn’t guilty. Lily knew for a fact that her father had not delivered the poisonous bouquet to Evelyn two nights earlier. And now that she only had one remaining parent, she had to protect him.

She slipped through Stefan’s door.

The room was in disarray, which never would’ve happened while her mother was alive. Lily checked under the mattress, beneath the four-poster bed, and in Stefan’s closet. She found no hint of the file. She started to worry that Stefan had hidden it in his study, and that was far too close to the living room for comfort.

He’d catch her if she tried to sneak in there.

Cursing under her breath, she opened the drawer to Stefan’s bedside table, keeping her gaze far from the table on the other side of the bed. Her mother’s table. Lily felt a twinge in her gut as she realized she’d been avoiding Evelyn’s half of the room. She didn’t want to see her mother’s dresses hanging in the closet. Didn’t want to feel the familiar satin or silk. When Lily had been young, she’d loved the cool feeling of the fabric against her cheek when she’d hugged her mother close.

They’d loved each other once.

But everything had changed once Evelyn had started bringing men into their apartment, and Lily didn’t want to think about what had happened next. The manipulation. The lies. She shuffled through Stefan’s drawer haphazardly, brushing aside a bottle of sleeping pills and a miniature tape recorder, which was empty. Everyone in the house knew that Stefan had trouble sleeping. He probably popped a couple of those pills and then listened to a tape of whale songs before drifting off to dreamland.