Ten years of Silas’s life stolen, in addition to mine and Caleb’s.
I stand there and let it move through me. It’s not the explosion I’d expected. More like the quiet release of pressure I’ve carried for a decade.
I was a kid from a trailer park who had just found the first real home she’d ever known at Caleb’s house with his family, and I blamed myself for losing it.
Every visit to that prison, and every time I sat across the glass from Silas, I swallowed down the guilt of it.
That guilt quietly rotted inside me, guiding decisions about what I deserved and didn’t in life. Every bit of it was built on something Z did before I ever had a chance.
He didn’t just take my father from me.
He took away my ability to believe in myself.
I spent a decade making decisions from inside that theft without knowing it.
I look at Z for a long moment, allowing myself to gaze at the boy I spent years sneaking across the dark to reach.
The boy who taught me to run toward the bleeding thing. I look at the man he became and the choices that carved him into someone I don’t recognize.
I find I have nothing left to say.
Domhnall is already on his phone, voice low and efficient in the hallway behind me. “Isaak. We’ve got action. I need you to find a safe site to meet with the MC President of the Kings—yes, a face to face—with perimeter, and the best trust and estate lawyer in Texas to read a family will by morning. Torres, right? Yes. Call her now.”
I listen to that for a second—the sound of my people,my actual people, moving on my behalf.
Then I close the door in Z’s face.
I don’t slam it. A slam would mean he still has the power to make me feel something that big.
Just aclick.
The quiet, final sound of a closed door that is simply that.
Closed. Permanently.
I stand in the hallway with my hand still on the knob and I breathe.
Caleb still doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t move to catch me or fix anything or make it better. He’s just there, six feet back, present and steady and waiting for whatever I need him to be.
I let go of the knob. My hands shake, but I can’t afford to deal with all the emotions cascading in the background yet.
Instead, I turn to Domhnall. “We need the lawyer to look at the clause saying none of us can kill each other, before we agree to anything. Make sure that’s ironclad.”
My voice is all business. “And I want Isaak’s full team at whatever site we choose, not just as backup. I want security at our side that the Kings cansee. Everything needs to be locked down, and every contingency run before we ever take one step in the door.”
Caleb nods once and Domhnall’s already on his phone again.
“And I want to know where the hell Silas might have disappeared to before I meet his brother.” I meet Caleb’s eyes.
He nods and pulls out his phone. “We’ll find him,” Caleb says. Simple. Certain.
I believe they’ll both do everything in their power.
So I walk back down the hall toward my son.
Outside there’s a man bleeding who used to be my whole world.
My uncle might be the President of the biggest, baddest MC this side of the border.