Insight of a Kenyan Girl

Tilly didn’t need to wonder who Nathaniel Pierce was. She had looked him in the eyes. She had shaken his hand the night she signed him at Mystique.

Tall. Measured. A quiet presence cloaked in intellect. He had spoken softly, but every word had cut like it was edited a thousand times before it left his mouth. Back then, she’d chalked his detachment up to the usual writer’s mystique—introspective, guarded. A man who lived more on paper than in the real world.

Now, she wasn’t so sure.

Now she thought maybe he’d been watching her that night, too—documenting her. Maybe the signing wasn’t business. Maybe it was bait.

She reopened the manuscript. The handwriting on the last page wasn’t part of the original draft.

It was a note. Scribbled in ink.

Tara— You were never just the editor. You were always the ending. —N

Tilly’s chest tightened.

The truth wasn’t just buried in the manuscript. It was buried in him. Nathaniel Pierce.

And she would find him.

She grabbed her bag, the manuscript under her arm, and headed down to archives. If Pierce was in the system, there had to be something—meeting records, submissions, contracts, or travel logs from that weekend at Mystique.

Her heels echoed through the quiet hallway of the publishing house’s lower floor. The place smelled like paper and ink and secrets.

She reached the archive room and punched in her key code.

The lights flickered on.

She dug through the locked drawer labeled SIGNINGS – PRIVATE AUTHORS. It took less than a minute to find the file.

Nathaniel Pierce.

Signed under special representation. No home address. No agency listed. Just one emergency contact:

A. D’Souza
Mystique Club, Archives Wing
Red Room Access Only

Red Room?

Tilly had been all through Mystique during her stay—except for that one place. The guarded hallway. The one that required a keycard and a whisper to enter.

She swallowed hard.

If Nathaniel was there… if he had been there all along…

Tilly stood up and tucked the file under her arm.

She was done waiting.

This time, she wasn’t going to knock.