Part 2: The Secret Hidden in the Snow
I stared at Julian, convinced the pain had made me misunderstand him.

“What are you saying?”

He placed the metal fragment on the table. Beneath the lamplight, I could see a tiny engraved symbol: a mountain peak surrounded by three stars.

Julian recognized it immediately.

“That mark belonged to my brother,” he said quietly.

I hadn’t known he had a brother.

His name was Samuel Boone, and three winters earlier, he had disappeared while investigating a group of men stealing land from isolated mountain families.

Julian had searched for him for months.

All he’d found was Samuel’s abandoned horse near the very trail where I had been injured.

“But why would his belongings be inside my leg?” I whispered.

Julian explained that Samuel had designed small metal fasteners to secure hidden mountain traps. Someone had apparently attached one to the dead branch, turning it into a deliberate hazard.

Then he asked a question I never expected.

“Did anyone know you were coming here?”

I remembered the stagecoach driver. The shopkeeper. And a thin man wearing a brown coat who had watched us leave the settlement.

When I described him, Julian went completely still.

“Did he have a scar above his left eyebrow?”

“Yes.”

Julian crossed the room and lifted a worn photograph from a wooden chest.

The man in the picture was unmistakable.

“That,” Julian said, “is the last person who saw my brother alive.”

Before I could respond, something struck the cabin door.

Three heavy knocks echoed through the room.

Julian extinguished the lamp and motioned for silence.

Outside, a man’s voice rose above the howling wind.

“Boone! I know you’ve got the woman in there!”

My heart hammered.

Julian reached for his rifle, but the stranger spoke again.

“Ask your bride what her father hid before he disappeared.”

I stopped breathing.

My father had vanished twelve years ago.

And I had never told Julian about him.