I was lying with a broken leg in an abandoned apartment when an unknown man knocked on the door — and Tyler’s face turned ash-gray in one second

The knife stopped in Tyler’s hand when an unknown man behind the apartment door pronounced my name as if he had known me for a long time.

I was lying on the floor. My left leg was unnaturally bent under my jeans, and with every breath fire ran through my body. Thin streaks of blood disappeared on the worn linoleum of the kitchen, while under the table my phone was silently flashing.

Tyler was bent over me and was staring at the kitchen towel.

“The neighbors will hear,” he whispered. “If you don’t be quiet, you’ll ruin both of us.”

“You broke my leg,” I barely said.

“You forced me to.”

His breath smelled like alcohol and a damp jacket. Ten minutes earlier my bag had found the closet, where for two years I had hidden it for escape. Tyler saw how I was folding clothes, then hit me, tripped me, and struck me with a heavy work boot.

The bone made a sound as if a dry branch had broken in winter.

Tyler left, but returned again. In his hands he held an ice pack and a bottle of orange drink, as if a gift could repair a person’s broken body.

Someone knocked on the door again.

Three times. Calmly. Heavily.

Tyler froze.

“Who did you bring?” he asked me.

“No one.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

He took a folding knife from his pocket and went toward the door. And I remembered my last message, which I had to send to my sister, Sadi: “He broke my leg. He’s coming back. Please help me.” From fear I mixed up the last digit and sent the text to a completely unfamiliar number.

The reply came in five seconds.

“Say that someone hurt you.”

Then I told him the address.

Now the voice of this unknown man could be heard from the other side of the door.

“Open up, Tyler. Or I’ll tear this door out of the wall.”

The color disappeared from Tyler’s face.

“Who are you?” he shouted.

“The man who already knows what you did.”

Tyler looked toward me. In his gaze, for the first time, I saw not anger, but real fear.

“Harper, where did you call?”

I did not answer. Under the table, next to the phone, my fingers touched a small wooden music box. I found this box behind the closet when I moved into the apartment. A painted glass bird was on its lid, and one wing was broken. Tyler always became angry when I touched it.

“Don’t open that box,” he told me once with strange severity.

At the time, his words seemed meaningless.

But now the box lay under my hand.

A third, stronger blow sounded on the door. The lock rattled. Tyler raised the knife and bent toward me.

“If someone comes in from there, you’ll die first,” he mocked me.

From outside, the unknown man calmly said:

“Harper, if you can hear me, stay on the floor. I’m coming in.”

The lock slowly turned. Tyler reached toward the towel, and I pressed my finger to a small metal button hidden under the broken wing. First a quiet click came from the box, then the lid lifted by itself, and my hand moved toward the folded sheet placed inside…

He pulled down the handle, and the door opened with such force that the clock hanging on the wall shook.

A tall man dressed in a black coat stood on the threshold. Raindrops glittered in his hair, and in his hand he held only a leather glove.

“Knife on the floor,” he said.

“Are you a police officer?”

“No. For you, that is worse.”

Tyler tried to attack, but the man twisted his wrist so that the knife fell with a noise. The next second Tyler was on his knees.

The unknown man bent down to me.

“I am Luka Beridze. You wrote to my sister’s number.”

“I… sent it by mistake.”

“Help sent by mistake is still help.”

Two people appeared behind him. One called an ambulance, the other tied Tyler’s hands. And I only looked into Luka’s eyes. There was such weariness in them, as if he had spent seven years in one night.

“What did you find in the box?” he asked me.

My heart stopped.

“How do you know about the box?”

For the first time Luka lost his calm.

“Because this box belonged to my sister.”

The ambulance’s sound filled the entrance hall. Before they moved me onto the stretcher, Luka went to the box and looked at the sheet. His face changed.

“This is handwriting,” he said. “Nino’s handwriting.”

Then Tyler screamed for the first time not at me, but at Luka:

“That woman has been sleeping in the ground for seven years already!”

Luka slowly raised his head.

“That is exactly why we must find out why she left this for you…”

At Luka’s last words Tyler fell silent as if no air were left in the room.

In the ambulance, after eleven at night, doctors were fixing my leg, while Luka stood outside the window and spoke quietly on the phone. A few minutes later he opened the door, holding the small wooden box in his hand.

“Now you need to know what you have become involved in,” he told me.

“I was just writing to my sister.”

“I know. But that thing was hidden in your home for seven years.”

We moved to a small examination room in the hospital. A fluorescent lamp flickered on the wall, and traces of dried blood could still be seen on my fingers.

Luka carefully lifted the box’s broken glass wing and took a thin memory card from the lower part. Then he unfolded the sheet.

“Nino wrote this two days before her death,” he said. “If this box has ended up with Harper, know that Tyler Grayson is involved in my murder. He knows where the recording is.”

The sound of blood rang in my ears.

“Did your sister live here?”

“Before you. She was a journalist and investigated our family’s affairs. She found financial records showing that Tyler and Police Captain David Cross blackmailed people and presented murders as accidents.”

“But Tyler is only a mechanic.”

“That’s how it seems.”

Luka turned on the phone. Nino’s face appeared on the screen. She was sitting by the same music box. My kitchen could be seen behind her, although at that time old residents still lived there.

Nino’s voice sounded:

“If you are watching this, I will no longer be able to speak to you. Tyler is not interested in money. He is afraid that I sent the recording. The video shows how he drives the car toward the river on Cross’s orders.”},{

In the video Tyler was young, but I could not mistake his face.

“This is impossible,” he whispered, because the door had remained half-open and he had heard everything.

Luka turned toward him.

“You were there on Nino’s last night.”

“I was repairing the car. Nothing more.”

“Then why is your voice on the recording?”

Luka turned on the audio. Tyler’s old, clear voice sounded in the room:

“If you don’t be quiet, I’ll make your brother lose everything too.”

Tyler leaned his head against the wall. On his face for the first time there was neither anger nor confidence.

I looked at Luka.

“Why did your sister send this to me? Why me?”

Luka showed me the last line of the sheet.

“Harper is the only one who can still find my things. If Tyler stayed with her, it means he is still looking for the recording.”

Then the hospital telephone rang. Luka answered, listened silently for several seconds, and his face hardened.

“What happened?” I asked.

He slowly lowered the phone.

“Cross found out that we found the recording. And now he is going to your sister…”