The meeting for the Court of Owls had ended and Samantha returned to her house quite exhausted. With the past few days, her doubt of there being a few Talons exclusively working for Lavina had strengthened.

Yet she couldn't strike too soon and the prospect of waiting for the right time had begun to wear out her patience. In her own way, she had started to narrow down the suspects but it was difficult because, unlike Lavina, she wasn't aware of who exactly were all the members under the owl masks.

She was trying her best to decode each one's identity but it was no easy task.

She had her doubts that most of those Talons belonged to influential families in Gotham. The reason she had to believe that was because the Court had massive financial funding or else their armors and resources could not have been achieved. 

Another point to prove her assumption right was that so far the Talons whose identity she knew of; Lincoln, Lavina, her father and her own self, all came from influential backgrounds.

Both the Vikanders and the Vanavers were part of the founding families of Gotham. And if her assumption was true, then the remaining founding families of Gotham could be involved with the Court as well.

That narrowed down her search considerably but still left room for a lot of doubt.

If her father had been alive, it would not have been that hard since he was one of the most loyal and trusted Talons. He had served in the Court from a young age and had been the right-hand man of the previous Head as well as the Head preceding him.

But due to the unwanted scene caused by the Joker at Gotham Theater, Henry Vanaver could no longer be of any help to her. And even though she had put an end to the Joker herself in order to avenge her father's death, that vengeance hadn't served her with any other benefit.

It made her ponder that if Henry had been alive, things would have been much different for her as well. Perhaps she wouldn't have had the courage to stand up to Lavina and perhaps she wouldn't be stuck in such a dire situation as she would not have been the Head of the Court.

Perhaps things could have been worse than they were already and it was that one thought that made her pause to reconsider everything.

Despite the fact that she was exhausted, she trudged up to her father's study, hoping to find something that could help her out. She knew he kept a locked cabinet and that was the first place she thought of checking for clues.

She took out the silver key and unlocked the cabinet, pulling its old wooden door open. She saw it was full to the brim with her father's old stuff including files, letters and books. 

Sitting down in front of the cabinet, she began to study the contents one by one, knowing that cabinet was her best shot to find out more about the sinister situation of the Court and its link to the Vikanders.

She found documents related to their family business, including the will of her grandfather. Putting all those aside, she began to search further in Henry's personal belongings, finding a few journals and a stash of letters.

By the way those were hidden deep in another concealed section of the antique cabinet, it was evident that her father had chosen to keep those out of reach from others. The items could probably hold information that Henry did not want to fall into the wrong hands.

Opening the stash that was kept underneath all the rest, she was surprised to see that it contained letters dating back to when Henry was in college. The letters were very old but preserved well such that even though the paper was turning brown, the writing on it could be deciphered.

She realized that the topmost stash would be the most recent out of all others, with the letters from earlier piled below. Curiosity took the better of her as she carefully sorted the letters and began to read.

She did not realize how long passed with her sitting on the floor, reading the letters. The more she read, the more she realized that her father had been very different from what she initially thought. And to her, he was still a stranger since she had spent a major part of her life abroad.

Discovering about his life, his interests and his perception through letters sent to him by his friends made her think of all the time she could have spent with him and gotten to know him but couldn't due to her own decision of staying away from the family. It sent a pang of regret through her heart though she knew it was futile to dwell on it because the past couldn't be reverted.

The night deepened yet she stayed in the study, straining her eyes over the different types of handwriting throughout those letters. Most of the letters were written by someone named Alastair. And though she had never heard her father mention him ever, through the letters exchanged between them, she could judge that they must have been good friends.

Hours lapsed until exhaustion tightened its hold over her but she was too tired to put everything back in the cabinet and return to her room. Darkness danced in front of her eyes and a few moments later, she had gone to sleep right there on the floor, the papers scattered all around her.

She was woken up in the morning when sunlight poured in through the window, illuminating the entire room. It was then she realized that she had fallen asleep in the study and her body was aching as she sat up. 

The rustle of papers made her more alert and she blinked twice to get used to the light. She began to pick the papers up, not wanting to cause any damage since they were very old and fragile.

However, in the abundant sunlight, her eyes got caught by a photograph peeking from among the scattered letters. Very carefully she took it out and looked at it closely.

At first glance, she got shocked as she thought the woman in the photograph was Lavina. But upon a closer look, she realized that couldn't be possible.

Henry Vanaver was in the picture too, standing with two other men whom she didn't recognize. She could see the picture was old since her father looked in his mid-twenties. The woman's uncanny resemblance to Lavina was perturbing her but it was then she struck upon a realization.

The man on her father's right had eyes exactly like Lavina's, piercingly dark like an owl's, while the woman looked like a striking image of her too. There could be only one explanation that those two were indeed Lavina's parents.

The identity of the third man with blue eyes was still a mystery to her but she could judge that the four of them had been very close.

It all made her think once again how crucial Henry could have been in giving her the answers to most of her questions regarding the Court. But his untimely death had made everything twice harder for her.

Focusing on the other details of the photograph, it seemed as if the four were at a private gathering. She began to search for the letter that the photograph could have been a part of and found an envelope, addressed to her father from Alastair.

She put all the contents back in the cabinet and locked it, except that photograph and letter which she took with herself so that she could study it later. She felt as if it had a connection to Lavina's motives of destroying the Court by using Richard as an indirect weapon.

And anything that would destroy the Court would destroy her first as she was the Head.

All she knew was that she had to uncover Lavina's secrets before the woman put an end to her and so far that letter and photograph seemed to be a lead in figuring out the mystery behind Lavina Vikander.

***