Chapter 8. The Boy Beneath the Wolf

The morning after their gentlest kiss, Harper Quinn woke not to silence—but to sound.

It wasn’t birdsong or hallway chatter or the hum of distant showers. It was something older. Sadder.

A violin.

The music drifted through the cracked window, faint and uneven, as though the wind itself had brought it in out of pity. The melody was beautiful in a fractured way—off-tempo, played with more pain than precision. A private kind of mourning.

She pulled on a sweater, bare feet hitting cold tile, and followed the sound out of instinct more than curiosity. It wasn’t meant to be heard. That much was clear. But that only made her need to understand it more.

The trail led her just one door over.

Room 3F.

Officially vacant. Unofficially ignored. The suite next to hers had always carried the kind of reputation Van Hollen specialized in—not dramatic, just absent. No lights. No movement. No proof anyone lived there.

Until now.

She knocked once.