PART 3 — THE LITTLE GIRL WHO REMEMBERED TOMORROW
“The first time this happened, you killed Matteo.”
For several seconds, no one in the hidden room breathed.
Claire stared at her daughter as if she were looking at a stranger wearing Lily’s face.
“Sweetheart,” she whispered, “what did you just say?”
Lily hugged her battered rabbit.
“I said Mr.
Moretti killed Uncle Matteo.”
My hand tightened around the old videotape.
“Lily.”
She looked at me.
“When?”
Her forehead wrinkled.
“I don’t know.”
“You said the first time.”
“Yes.”
“The first time what?”
She pointed at the television.
“This.”
The screen was black again.
No static.
No future image.
Nothing.
Claire crossed the room, dropped to her knees, and grabbed Lily gently by the shoulders.
“Who taught you to say that?”
“Nobody.”
“Lily, look at me.”
“I am.”
“Did Matteo tell you?”
“No.”
“My mother?”
Lily shook her head.
“Then how do you know?”
The child became frustrated.
“I remember.”
Claire’s face lost its color.
Children remember strange things.
Dreams.
Half-heard conversations.
Images reconstructed from fear.
But three-year-olds do not casually describe future murders.
I looked back at the shelves.
There were dozens of tapes, but one label now mattered more than all the others.
ADRIAN — AGE 16.
I put it into the old player.
The television flickered.
A younger version of my father appeared.
He looked forty-five.
Powerful.
Controlled.
Terrified.
The camera shifted.
And there I was.
Sixteen years old.
Strapped to a hospital bed.
Sweat soaked my hair.
My eyes were closed.
My mother stood beside me.
Matteo, fourteen at the time, was crying in the corner.
A doctor said, “He’s entering REM.”
My father replied sharply, “Wake him.”
The doctor hesitated.
“We need to see what happens.”
“You already know what happens.”
“No.
We know what happened once.”
“What happened once killed three people.”
My stomach dropped.
On the recording, my sleeping body began whispering.
At first the words were too soft to understand.
Then the microphone picked them up.
“Thomas is going downstairs.”
My father froze.
Another voice from outside the camera said, “Who is Thomas?”
My mother whispered, “His tutor.”
On the tape, I continued.
“He smells gas.”
My pulse accelerated.
“He’s opening the basement door.”
Someone swore.
Then teenage me screamed:
“DON’T TURN ON THE LIGHT!”
The recording cut to static.
I stared at the screen.
Claire covered her mouth.
“That explosion,” I said.
Nobody answered.
I remembered fragments now.
Sirens.
Glass.
My father carrying me outside.
Three bodies.
For decades I had believed I’d witnessed the accident.
But I hadn’t.
I had described it before it happened.
A sound came from the doorway.
Clapping.
Slow.
Deliberate.
Matteo stood there.
Blood dried on his lower lip.
His pistol pointed at the floor.
“For a supposedly brilliant man,” he said, “you’ve always been remarkably slow when the truth involves you.”
Claire stepped in front of Lily.
I raised my gun.
“Don’t.”
Matteo’s expression remained calm.
“If I wanted you dead, Adrian, you’d have stopped breathing three years ago.”
“Then explain.”
“You dream events before they happen.”
I almost laughed.
He didn’t.
“You expect me to believe that?”
“No.
I expect you to remember it.”
Matteo glanced at the television.
“When you were sixteen, you began predicting accidents.
At first minutes ahead.
Then hours.”
“And the three people?”
“Your tutor.
A guard.
Your friend Marco.”
I swallowed.
“Could I have saved them?”
Matteo’s eyes hardened.
“You tried.”
Something cracked open in my memory.
Running.
My bare feet on marble.
Screaming at Marco not to follow Thomas.
My father restraining me.
A flash.
Heat.
Then hospital lights.
“I knew.”
“Yes.”
“And Father wiped my memory.”
“He had no choice.”
“You always have a choice.”
“Not when your son wakes from dreams screaming about deaths that haven’t happened yet.”
Claire whispered, “Why keep him awake?”
Matteo looked at her.
“Because dreams make the visions stronger.”
I understood.
Three years ago, they had returned.
So Matteo had kept me exhausted enough to prevent deep sleep.
The stimulants.
The monitoring.
The lies.
“You stole from me because I was weak.”
Matteo shook his head.
“No.”
“The financial irregularities?”
“Money moved through shell companies to fund this.”
He pointed around us.
“Medical monitoring.
Security.
Researchers.”
“You expect gratitude?”
“No.”
His voice broke for the first time.
“I expect you to understand that I destroyed your trust to keep you alive.”
I lowered my weapon slightly.
Then Lily spoke.
“He’s still lying.”
Every adult turned toward her.
Matteo went very still.
Lily pointed at him.
“Not about the dreams.”
She looked at me.
“About why Grandma Isabella came back.”
Matteo’s face changed.
Fear.
Real fear.
“Lily,” he said quietly.
She continued.
“She didn’t come because of Mr.
Moretti.”
Claire whispered, “Then why?”
Lily looked up at her mother.
“She came for me.”
—
PART 4 — THE DEAD WOMAN WHO CAME BACK FOR A CHILD
Claire grabbed Lily and pulled her close.
“No.”
Lily frowned.
“Mama—”
“No.”
Matteo backed toward the hallway.
I noticed.
“Where are you going?”
“To stop Isabella.”
“From doing what?”
He looked directly at Lily.
“Repeating what your father started.”
A woman’s voice came from behind him.
“Your father didn’t start it.”
Matteo spun.
Isabella Moretti stood in the corridor.
My mother.
Eighteen years dead.
Alive.
For one irrational second, I became a child.
Not a businessman.
Not a man feared by newspapers and prosecutors.
Just a son looking at his mother.
Her silver hair was shorter now.
Fine lines framed her eyes.
But those eyes were unchanged.
Dark.
Intelligent.
Mine.
“Mother.”
Her lips trembled.
“Adrian.”
I had imagined seeing her again thousands of times.
In none of those fantasies did I point a gun at her.
“You let me bury you.”
“I know.”
“You watched me grieve.”
“Yes.”
“Eighteen years.”
Tears appeared in her eyes.
“Yes.”
I wanted to hate her.
Instead, my voice cracked.
“Why?”
She looked at Lily.
“Because your gift came from me.”
Silence.
Isabella stepped into the hidden room.
“My mother had it.
Her father had it.”
“Seeing the future?”
“Fragments.
Possibilities.”
Matteo interrupted.
“Don’t romanticize it.”
“I’m not.”
She turned back to me.
“Most of us experienced nothing more than dreams that occasionally came true.
But you were different.”
“Why?”
“Because of your father.”
I stared.
“He didn’t have the ability.”
“No.”
Her eyes became colder.
“He tried to create it.”
The room seemed to contract.
Isabella touched an old steel cabinet.
“Your father became obsessed after he learned about my family.
He believed foresight would make the Morettis untouchable.”
Claire whispered, “Project Nightfall.”
“Yes.”
My mother nodded.
“He funded doctors.
Neurologists.
Sleep researchers.
Experimental drugs.”
My stomach turned.
“He experimented on me?”
Isabella closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
Matteo looked away.
“How old?”
She could barely say it.
“Nine.”
That tape.
ADRIAN — AGE 9.
I remembered injections.
A white room.
My father telling me it was medicine.
“You let him?”
“No.”
Her voice sharpened.
“I didn’t know until later.”
“So you faked your death.”
“I exposed him.
He threatened Matteo.
You.
Everyone.
I disappeared because it was the only way I could investigate without him knowing.”
“But Father died eleven years ago.”
“Yes.”
“And you stayed gone.”
Isabella looked shattered.
“Because Nightfall didn’t die with him.”
My eyes went to Matteo.
He shook his head.
“Not me.”
“Then who?”
Lily answered.
“My daddy.”
Claire collapsed against the wall.
“Lily…”
The child looked confused by her mother’s reaction.
“My daddy knows Grandma.”
Claire’s voice became a whisper.
“Your father is dead.”
“No.”
Lily shook her head.
“He comes when you’re sleeping.”
Something horrifying became visible in Claire’s expression.
“My husband,” she said.
“Daniel died in a car crash.”
Isabella slowly shook her head.
“No, Claire.”
Claire stared at her.
“What are you saying?”
“Daniel Carter was never his real name.”
Matteo closed the door behind us.
Isabella continued.
“His name is Daniel Moretti.”
My blood went cold.
“Moretti?”
“My husband had another son before you were born.”
I nearly dropped the gun.
“A son no one knew about?”
“Gabriel knew.”
My supposedly dead uncle.
Matteo muttered, “And Daniel became Nightfall’s most loyal believer.”
Claire began trembling.
“My husband worked in insurance.”
“No,” Isabella said gently.
“He worked for Adrian’s father.”
Lily looked between us.
“That means Mr.
Moretti is family?”
Nobody answered.
Because the answer was worse.
Isabella knelt in front of Lily.
“Yes.”
The child smiled.
“Cool.”
Even Matteo gave a stunned laugh.
But I couldn’t.
Because I finally understood.
“Lily inherited it.”
Isabella nodded.
“Stronger than you.”
“How much stronger?”
My mother looked at Lily.
Then at me.
“She doesn’t only dream the future.”
My throat tightened.
“What does she do?”
Lily answered proudly.
“I remember it.”
“Remember what?”
“All the times.”
Claire looked terrified.
Isabella whispered:
“Possible futures.”
—
PART 5 — THE NIGHT WE ALL DIED
At 2:07 a.m., Lily Carter drew seven people dying with purple crayons.
She sat at my dining table while the rest of us stared at the picture.
Seven stick figures.
A house.
Flames.
One small yellow lion.
“What is this?”
Claire asked.
Lily pointed.
“That’s tonight.”
Claire’s face crumpled.
“No, baby.”
“It happened.”
“You mean you dreamed it.”
“No.”
Lily sounded annoyed.
“I remember.”
Isabella stood behind her.
“What time?”
Lily looked at the grandfather clock.
“When that says three.”
Fifty-three minutes.
I studied the drawing.
“Who are the seven?”
Lily pointed one by one.
“Mama.
Grandma.
Uncle Matteo.
Doctor Lady.”
Elena.
“You.”
She touched another.
“Me.”
Then the final figure.
“Daddy.”
Claire stopped breathing.
Daniel was coming.
I ordered the house evacuated.
Matteo blocked me.
“You can’t.”
“Move.”
“If Lily saw everyone here, changing the arrangement may cause the event.”
“That makes no sense.”
“Nothing about tonight does.”
Isabella intervened.
“Visions aren’t fixed.”
I looked at her.
“You said possibilities.”
“Yes.”
“So we change it.”
Lily shook her head.
“I tried.”
We all stared.
“What do you mean?”
I asked.
She drew another picture.
Same house.
Different deaths.
“I remember Mama running outside.”
Another drawing.
Claire lying beside the gates.
“I remember you driving away.”
My car smashed beneath a truck.
“I remember Grandma calling the police.”
A sniper’s crosshairs over Isabella.
Lily pushed the pictures away.
“I tried lots.”
Claire began crying.
“How many?”
Lily held up both hands.
“More than this.”
A three-year-old remembering her mother dying again and again.
That realization hurt more than anything Nightfall had done to me.
I knelt beside her.
“Look at me.”
She did.
“You don’t have to solve this.”
“But everyone dies.”
“No.”
I took her tiny hand.
“Adults are going to handle this one.”
“Adults keep messing it up.”
Matteo coughed to hide a laugh.
She was right.
At 2:31, the power died.
The estate plunged into darkness.
Backup generators failed.
Matteo raised his weapon.
“He’s here.”
Windows shattered downstairs.
Men entered from the garden.
Daniel had brought an army.
Gunfire erupted.
I pulled Lily behind the stone fireplace while Matteo covered the hall.
Claire screamed.
Isabella dragged her down.
A voice sounded through the house intercom.
“Adrian.”
Calm.
Male.
Almost friendly.
“My brother.”
I had never met Daniel.
Yet hearing him call me that made my skin crawl.
“You have something our father spent his life trying to build.”
I shouted toward the ceiling.
“You mean a traumatized child?”
“No.”
Daniel laughed.
“A map of every future.”
Lily covered her ears.
Daniel continued.
“With Lily, we never lose again.”
“You’re talking about your daughter.”
“I’m talking about evolution.”
Claire’s face transformed.
Whatever love she had once felt for her husband vanished.
“You bastard.”
Daniel heard her.
“Hello, Claire.”
She stepped toward the hall.
I stopped her.
Daniel said, “Bring Lily to the cellar.
Everyone else walks away.”
Lily whispered, “He’s lying.”
“I know.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“In the other times, you think you know.”
Her voice trembled.
“This is the part where you die.”
A shot struck the wall inches from my head.
We moved.
Matteo fired twice.
A man fell.
Smoke began pouring through the western hallway.
The fire from Lily’s drawing.
Three o’clock approached.
2:56.
2:57.
2:58.
We retreated into the hidden Nightfall room.
Elena had joined us after regaining consciousness.
Seven people.
Exactly as Lily drew.
Then the hidden door slammed shut.
Locked automatically.
Gas hissed from the vents.
Matteo cursed.
Daniel’s voice came through an old speaker.
“Father designed this room beautifully.”
Claire covered Lily’s mouth with a wet cloth.
“Adrian!”
I attacked the control panel.
Nothing.
2:59.
Smoke thickened.
Lily stared at the clock on the video system.
She began crying.
“I can’t find one.”
I knelt.
“One what?”
“A tomorrow.”
My heart stopped.
Every possible path she remembered ended here.
I held her face gently.
“Then don’t look for tomorrow.”
She sobbed.
“What?”
“Look at now.”
I remembered her storybook.
Her certainty.
Her ridiculous command twenty minutes earlier.
Sit back.
Sometimes the simplest answer is the one powerful people never consider.
“Lily.”
She looked at me.
“You’ve spent all night remembering what happens next.”
I smiled.
“What if we do something you never remembered?”
She blinked.
“What?”
I turned toward Matteo.
“Shoot me.”
Everyone stared.
Matteo said, “Absolutely not.”
“In the shoulder.”
“No.”
“Every future Lily remembers depends on us behaving predictably.”
Isabella understood first.
“Introduce randomness.”
“Yes.”
Matteo raised the gun.
“This is the stupidest plan you’ve ever had.”
“Probably.”
He fired.
Pain exploded through my shoulder.
Claire screamed.
Lily screamed louder.
But the gas stopped.
The lock clicked open.
Everyone stared.
Matteo whispered, “Why?”
I laughed through the pain.
“Medical emergency override.”
My father had designed the room to unlock if its biometric monitors detected catastrophic trauma.
We ran.
Behind us, Daniel shouted through the speaker.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen!”
Lily looked over Claire’s shoulder.
And smiled.
For the first time that night, the future had changed.
—
PART 6 — THE BROTHER BEHIND NIGHTFALL
We reached the underground tunnels at 3:04.
Daniel waited at the end of them.
Alone.
No guards.
No panic.
Just a man in a dark coat holding a gun.
He looked like my father.
That was the cruelest part.
Same jaw.
Same eyes.
Same confidence.
Claire stopped.
“Daniel.”
He smiled.
“Hello, sweetheart.”
“Don’t call me that.”
Lily buried her face in Claire’s neck.
Daniel looked wounded.
“You told her I died.”
“You made me bury an empty coffin.”
“I protected you.”
“You abandoned us.”
“I built something for her.”
“You built a prison.”
Daniel’s smile vanished.
He pointed the gun toward me.
“You ruined everything.”
I glanced at Lily.
“What does she remember now?”
Lily whispered, “Nothing.”
Daniel heard.
His expression sharpened.
“Nothing?”
She shook her head.
“I can’t see after Uncle Matteo shot Mr.
Moretti.”
Daniel became pale.
That was when I understood.
Nightfall’s entire power depended on foresight.
Plans based on predicted behavior.
Lily’s visions had made Daniel nearly unbeatable.
But now we had stepped beyond them.
He was blind.
For the first time, so was I.
And somehow that felt like freedom.
Daniel fired.
Matteo shoved me aside.
The bullet struck him in the abdomen.
“MATTEO!”
He collapsed.
I fired back.
Daniel disappeared behind a pillar.
Isabella ran to Matteo.
Blood spread beneath him.
He grabbed my sleeve.
“Don’t chase him.”
“He shot you.”
“Yes.”
Matteo coughed.
“Still a terrible reason to be stupid.”
Despite everything, I laughed.
Then Lily suddenly wriggled free from Claire.
“Daddy!”
She ran.
Daniel emerged.
His weapon raised.
Claire screamed.
I aimed.
But Lily stood between us.
Daniel stared at his daughter.
For the first time, the fanatic disappeared.
He became a father.
“Lily.”
She walked closer.
“You’re scary.”
His face broke.
“I’m sorry.”
“You hurt Mama.”
“I never wanted—”
“You hurt Uncle Matteo.”
He swallowed.
“You don’t understand.”
She frowned.
“You always say that when you do bad things.”
No one moved.
Lily reached into her pajama pocket.
And pulled out the memory card from her rabbit.
Daniel’s eyes widened.
“Give me that.”
“No.”
“It belongs to me.”
“It’s Bunny’s.”
She threw it.
Not to him.
Into a drainage channel.
The card vanished into rushing water.
Daniel lunged.
I tackled him.
We hit the stone floor.
His gun skidded away.
He punched me directly in my wounded shoulder.
White pain flooded my vision.
He reached for my throat.
“You think this ends with me?”
I forced him backward.
“Who else?”
He laughed.
“Half your empire exists because Nightfall predicted markets, rivals, elections, deaths.”
I froze.
“What?”
“Father used you long before you knew.”
My success.
My legendary instincts.
Deals everyone believed were genius.
Had some decisions been planted?
Suggested?
Engineered?
Daniel grinned.
“You were never the king, Adrian.”
He leaned close.
“You were the oracle.”
A shot echoed.
Daniel jerked.
Then looked down.
Blood spread across his leg.
Claire held the gun.
Hands shaking.
“You were also a terrible husband.”
Daniel collapsed.
Sirens finally sounded above.
Isabella had activated an emergency beacon.
Daniel laughed from the floor.
“You still don’t understand.”
I approached.
“Then explain.”
His smile widened.
“Ask your mother why she really disappeared.”
Isabella went still.
Daniel whispered:
“She wasn’t hiding from Father.”
He looked at me.
“She was hiding from you.”
—
PART 7 — THE MEMORY MY MOTHER FEARED
By dawn, Daniel was under guard.
Matteo was in surgery.
Claire and Lily were safe.
And my mother sat across from me in the library.
“Tell me.”
Isabella stared at the sunrise.
“Your visions were never the dangerous part.”
“What was?”
“You could change them.”
“That sounds useful.”
“No.”
She looked at me.
“When you were sixteen, every time you tried to prevent a future, another one replaced it.”
“Like Lily.”
“Not like Lily.”
Her hands trembled.
“You began choosing.”
My chest tightened.
“Choosing what?”
“Which future happened.”
Silence.
“That’s impossible.”
“So was knowing the explosion before it happened.”
She continued.
“Your father realized your brain wasn’t merely predicting probabilities.
Under deep REM sleep, you were somehow selecting between them.”
I almost laughed.
“You’re saying I control reality?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
“We never knew.”
Her eyes filled with tears.
“But after the explosion, you said something.”
“What?”
“You woke up and told me there had been a version where Marco lived.”
My childhood friend.
My throat closed.
“You said you chose the version where he died because, in the other one, Matteo died.”
I stared at her.
“No.”
“You were sixteen.”
“No.”
“You were terrified.”
“No.”
“You kept trying to save everyone.”
I stood.
“That doesn’t mean I killed Marco.”
“I know.”
She began crying.
“But you believed you did.”
That was the truth Nightfall had buried.
Not that I was dangerous.
That a child had been forced to believe every tragedy was his responsibility.
My father had used that guilt.
Fed it.
Turned it into obedience.
Insomnia became a cage.
If I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t dream.
If I couldn’t dream, nobody died because of my choices.
For twenty-six years, fear had controlled me.
Then Lily entered my bedroom with a storybook.
And simply asked me to sleep.
The absurdity nearly broke me.
“What happens now?”
I asked.
Isabella smiled sadly.
“That depends on whether you still believe your father.”
I looked toward the terrace.
Lily was outside with Claire.
Morning sunlight touched her curls.
She was drawing something.
Not death this time.
Flowers.
I walked out.
She looked up.
“Mr.
Moretti.”
“What are you drawing?”
“Tomorrow.”
I froze.
She smiled.
“It’s boring.”
“Boring?”
“Yes.”
She showed me.
Claire making pancakes.
Matteo in a hospital bed complaining.
Isabella drinking coffee.
Me sleeping on a couch.
I stared at that last image.
“I’m asleep?”
“Yes.”
“Nobody dies?”
“No.”
“No fire?”
“No.”
“No shooting?”
She shook her head.
“What happens after?”
Lily shrugged.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t remember?”
“No.”
For the first time, she looked delighted.
“I think tomorrow is new.”
Something inside my chest finally released.
But before I could answer, Elena ran onto the terrace.
“Adrian.”
Her face was pale.
“What?”
“Matteo woke up.”
“That’s good.”
“No.”
She held out a folded paper.
“He asked me to give you this before anyone else saw it.”
I opened it.
Three words.
LILY ISN’T NIGHTFALL.
Below them:
YOU AREN’T EITHER.
And beneath that:
CHECK DANIEL’S DNA.
—
PART 8 — THE LAST SECRET OF THE MORETTI FAMILY
The DNA results arrived forty-eight hours later.
Daniel was not my brother.
Not half brother.
Not cousin.
Not Moretti.
Nothing.
Claire read the report twice.
“That’s impossible.”
Isabella looked genuinely stunned.
“He knew things only family knew.”
Matteo, pale but alive in a hospital bed, gave a weak smile.
“That was the trick.”
I turned toward him.
“You knew?”
“I suspected.”
“Since when?”
“Since Daniel called himself Father’s son.”
Matteo adjusted the blanket over his abdomen.
“Your father never acknowledged illegitimate children.
Not from shame.”
He smiled faintly.
“From paranoia.
He had everyone tested.”
“So who was Daniel?”
Matteo looked at Isabella.
“Doctor Samuel Vale’s son.”
The doctor from the old videotapes.
The man who ran Project Nightfall.
Daniel had inherited no gift.
No Moretti blood.
Only an obsession.
His father had convinced him that Nightfall could be reproduced.
That Lily represented the final proof.
But another question remained.
“Then why does Lily remember futures?”
Elena answered from the doorway.
“She doesn’t.”
Everyone turned.
Claire frowned.
“What?”
Elena held Lily’s medical file.
“I examined her neurological scans.”
“And?”
“They’re normal.”
Isabella stood.
“But she predicted—”
“No.”
Elena interrupted gently.
“She repeated information.”
I understood first.
“The rabbit.”
Elena nodded.
“Daniel used it to talk to her.”
Claire’s face collapsed.
“All those things she remembered…”
“He fed her scenarios.”
Matteo whispered, “Repeated simulations.”
Daniel’s organization had rehearsed dozens of possible attacks.
Different escape routes.
Different deaths.
Different outcomes.
Lily heard them.
Again and again.
To a three-year-old, those recordings became memories.
Not prophecy.
Trauma.
“What about the video of adult Lily?”
Claire asked.
“Deepfake,” Elena said.
“Daniel wanted Adrian to believe the Nightfall mythology.”
I stared.
“And my dreams?”
Elena hesitated.
“Some may have been coincidence.”
I almost objected.
Then she continued.
“Some weren’t.”
She placed another file down.
“Your father’s researchers learned that you were extraordinarily sensitive to environmental cues while sleeping.
Sounds.
Conversations.
Smells.
Patterns.”
Matteo nodded slowly.
“You heard things subconsciously.”
Elena pointed at me.
“Your brain assembled clues before your conscious mind did.”
The gas explosion.
My tutor had mentioned the smell.
A guard had complained about a faulty pipe.
Marco had talked about going downstairs.
I had heard fragments.
My sleeping mind connected them.
I didn’t see the future.
I noticed the present better than anyone realized.
My father mistook that for prophecy.
Then exploited it.
My mother spent eighteen years believing the same myth.
Matteo drugged me because he believed it.
Daniel built an army around it.
Nightfall had never been supernatural.
It had been something far more dangerous.
People believing it was.
I laughed.
Not because it was funny.
Because three generations of my family had destroyed themselves over a misunderstanding.
Lily climbed onto Matteo’s hospital bed.
“So I’m not magic?”
Matteo winced as she landed near his stitches.
“You are extremely loud.”
She frowned.
“That’s not magic.”
“It can be.”
Claire laughed through tears.
Isabella covered her face.
Even Elena smiled.
And I realized something.
For the first time in years, we were all in one room with no secrets controlling us.
Daniel was charged with kidnapping, conspiracy, attempted murder, illegal surveillance, and enough financial crimes to keep prosecutors busy for years.
Nightfall’s facilities were dismantled.
Every archive was turned over.
Every hidden account exposed.
I sold half the businesses my father had built.
Not because they were corrupt.
Because I no longer wanted to spend my life protecting a kingdom built by a frightened man.
Matteo recovered.
Slowly.
Painfully.
He apologized exactly once.
“I should have told you.”
“Yes.”
“I thought I was protecting you.”
“You were an idiot.”
“Yes.”
I looked at him.
“Still my brother.”
He looked away quickly.
“Pain medication is making you sentimental.”
Isabella did not vanish again.
She moved into a small villa by the sea.
Claire brought Lily there every Sunday.
And six months later, something happened that would once have terrified everyone.
Lily stopped talking about tomorrow.
Completely.
No memories.
No predictions.
No frightening drawings.
Just preschool.
Finger paint.
Dinosaurs.
And an aggressive campaign to convince everyone that vegetables were “government leaves.”
As for me—
I slept.
The first night was terrifying.
I lay in bed waiting for visions.
Waiting for death.
Waiting for some hidden part of my mind to decide who lived and who didn’t.
Nothing happened.
I dreamed about a train station.
Then about a dog wearing my father’s hat.
Then something involving Matteo losing an argument with a chicken.
I slept eleven hours.
When I woke, sunlight filled the room.
No bodies.
No fire.
No catastrophe.
Just Lily sitting at the edge of the bed.
I nearly jumped through the wall.
“How did you get in here?”
She grinned.
“Grandma let me.”
“You have your own house.”
“I know.”
“Use it.”
She climbed under the blanket.
“No.”
I sighed.
“What do you want?”
She pulled out the same battered storybook from that first night.
The rabbit sat beside her, repaired now, both ears restored.
“You didn't finish the story.”
I looked at the book.
Then at her.
“You came into my room six months ago because Mrs.
Ricci said I never slept.”
“Yes.”
“You almost got kidnapped.”
“Yes.”
“My brother got shot.”
“Yes.”
“My mother came back from the dead.”
“Yes.”
“We uncovered a secret experiment spanning three generations.”
“Yes.”
“And what concerns you is that we never finished your book?”
She considered this.
“Yes.”
I laughed so hard my shoulder hurt.
“Fine.”
She opened the book.
Then paused.
“Mr.
Moretti?”
“What?”
“Are you happy?”
Nobody had asked me that in years.
Not whether I was successful.
Safe.
Powerful.
Feared.
Healthy.
Happy.
I looked through the open bedroom doors.
Claire stood in the hallway with coffee.
Matteo was arguing with Isabella downstairs.
Mrs.
Ricci was shouting that someone had burned breakfast.
Morning sunlight spilled across the floor.
My house had once been silent because everyone feared disturbing me.
Now it was unbearably loud.
Perfectly alive.
“Yes,” I said.
Lily smiled.
“Good.”
She started reading.
Still mispronouncing half the words.
Still inventing the parts she couldn’t remember.
And twenty minutes later, exactly as she had on the night everything began, my eyes became heavy.
“Lily?”
“Hm?”
“If I fall asleep…”
She looked at me.
“What?”
I smiled.
“Nothing.”
Because there was nothing left to fear.
No prophecy.
No Nightfall.
No curse.
Just sleep.
Just family.
Just tomorrow arriving without anyone needing to know what it held.
My eyes closed.
Before I drifted off, I heard Lily whisper to Claire:
“See?
I told you I could make him sleep.”
Claire laughed softly.
Then Lily added:
“But don't tell him the funny part.”
“What funny part?”
A pause.
Then Lily whispered:
“I really did dream about the chicken.”
My eyes opened.
She was already running.
“LILY!”
Her laughter exploded through the hallway.
Matteo shouted from downstairs:
“What chicken?”
Isabella yelled:
“Why is everyone running?”
Claire nearly spilled her coffee laughing.
And for the first time in my life, I decided there were some mysteries I didn’t need to solve.
I pulled the blanket over my head.
Closed my eyes.
And went back to sleep.
Not because someone drugged me.
Not because someone commanded me.
Not because I feared what dreams might bring.
But because after a lifetime of trying to control tomorrow, I had finally discovered the one thing my father, Daniel, Nightfall, and even I had never understood:
The future becomes worth living the moment you stop demanding that it explain itself in advance.
Downstairs, my family continued laughing.
Outside, the morning sun rose over the Moretti estate.
And beside me, on the nightstand, sat a gray rabbit with two repaired ears.
Beneath it was a note written in purple crayon:
MR.
MORETTI — TOMORROW IS GOING TO BE GOOD.
No prediction.
No prophecy.
Just a promise from a little girl.
And somehow, that was better.
THE END
Source: Stories of Destiny · Thao Thao
