Chapter 155- Case 410.

Arabella:

I looked around the evidence room of the Guard Station.

Metal cabinets covered most of the walls, each one divided into dozens of locked drawers. Everything collected from old investigations was stored here, some of it untouched for years.

Anika’s case was number 401. I walked along the cabinets until I found the right section, then ran my finger over the numbers.

398, 399, 400. There.

401

I pulled the key from my pocket.

The inspector had called me that morning and asked me to come in because the key had finally arrived. Normally, evidence from a case this old could only be accessed with authorization from Royal Guard Headquarters, and the master key remained with them.

But my request had gone through Lucien. Apparently, when the Lycan King asked for something, people rarely said no.

I slid the key into the lock and opened the drawer. There wasn’t much inside.

A clear evidence bag sat near the back, along with the original case report. I pulled both out and placed them on the table. I had already read the list of everything recovered that night.

But reading about it and seeing it with my own eyes were two different things. I opened the bag carefully.

The first thing I took out was a broken brooch. Half of it was missing, leaving a jagged edge where the metal had snapped. Next was a small piece of Anika’s broken fingernail, preserved separately.

I swallowed and set it down. There was also the back of an earring, a narrow strip of dark fabric that had been found caught beneath one of her fingernails, and a silver cufflink recovered a few feet from where her body had been discovered.

I picked up the cufflink.

It was scratched and slightly discolored with age, but there was a tiny symbol engraved on its surface. I brought it closer to my face.

All this time, I had suspected Vanessa had something to do with Anika’s murder.

The necklace she had borrowed from me and conveniently returned right before I was sent to the palace. The way she had dyed my hair. There had always been too many little things pointing me back to her.

But now, looking at the evidence spread across the table, something didn’t fit. None of it belonged to Vanessa.

I had spent too many years cleaning her bedroom, putting away her clothes, picking up her jewelry and arranging the things she carelessly left lying around. I knew practically everything she owned.

The brooch wasn’t hers, neither was the earring. And I had never seen that cufflink in her room. I slowly sat back.

No.

Vanessa might have been my enemy, but that didn’t make her Anika’s murderer. Then who the hell was?

I pulled the postmortem report toward me and started reading it.

Most of it was difficult to get through. Anika had injuries all over her body. Bruises. Cuts. Scratches. Signs that she had been tortured before she died.

But something on the next page made me stop. There were several injuries around her breasts and genital area.

I frowned and read the section again. Why were there so many injuries concentrated there?

I turned the page, expecting to find some explanation, but there was nothing. Just another clinical list of Anika’s injuries and the condition of her body when she had been examined.

A knock sounded at the door, pulling my attention away from the report. Before I could answer, the door opened and Bradley stepped inside. He paused near the entrance, his eyes moving over the open files and evidence bag spread across the table before settling on me. He closed the door behind him and walked over.

"Found anything new?" he asked as he pulled out the chair beside mine. Instead of answering, I pushed the report toward him.

"Did you ever read her postmortem report?"

"Of course." He glanced at me before lowering his eyes to the file. "Why?"

"Read that part again." His brows pulled together as he followed where I was pointing. I waited until he finished.

"The injuries don’t look random to me," I said.

Bradley’s eyes continued moving over the page for a few seconds before he finally looked at me. The small crease between his brows deepened.

"What are you seeing that I’m not?"

I leaned closer and turned the report slightly toward myself. My finger moved down the list of injuries, stopping at one entry and then another.

"Here. And here." I glanced at him. "Do you notice where most of them are concentrated?"

He lowered his eyes again.

I waited, watching his face as he read.

When he still didn’t say anything, I tapped the lower section of the page.

"Her breasts, Bradley. And around her genital area." Saying it aloud made the possibility in my head feel suddenly much more real. "Those aren’t exactly places someone would keep attacking by accident. Is there a possibility that she was raped?"

I stared at the report again. What the hell had really happened to Anika?

***

The man who had led Anika’s investigation sat across from Bradley and me, reading the old postmortem report.

After a moment, he nodded. "Yes. I noticed it at the time too. There were significantly more injuries around her genital area. The irritation and abrasions also suggested repeated contact."

My stomach turned as my eyes dropped back to the report. Just imagining what Anika might have gone through made me feel sick. "Then why isn’t it written anywhere that she might have been raped?"

He shook his head. "Because we couldn’t confirm that. There were physical signs that raised the possibility of sexual assault, but no semen was recovered from her body."

"But that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen."

"No," he admitted. "It doesn’t. It only means we didn’t have enough evidence to prove that it did."

One thing was becoming painfully clear. There was more to Anika’s death than what was written in Case 401 file.

Whoever killed Anika Volkov hadn’t just wanted her dead. They had hated her enough to make her suffer first.