Aunt Reyna

Kael

I read the name three times before it landed.

Reyna wasn't blood. She was my mother's college roommate, close enough that we'd called her aunt since before I could talk, close enough to have a key to the house and a standing invite to every holiday. She'd been at the hospital when Lila was born. At my parents' wedding too, standing right up front.

She'd also been the one who handled things when I was seventeen.

I texted Lila back fast, hands moving quicker than my thoughts could keep up with. "Are you sure? How sure."

Lila: I heard her on the phone last week. She said your name and Elara's in the same sentence and hung up fast when she saw me in the hallway. Didn't think anything of it until now.

Elara was watching me, waiting for whatever came next. I turned the phone so she could read it herself instead of hearing it secondhand.

"She was in the room when Dad paid Wren off," I said. "She set up the transfer, made sure the paperwork disappeared. She's known about this longer than anyone alive besides me and my father."

"Why now, though. Ten years is a long time to sit on something like that."

I didn't have an answer for that, not a good one. Reyna had never asked me for anything in return, never brought it up again after that summer ended. If anything she'd been kinder to me since then, checking in more, and I'd never questioned it. I'd just been grateful someone had cleaned up the mess quietly without my father ever finding out how deep it actually went.

My phone buzzed again. Not Lila this time.

Unknown Number: Five minutes, Elara. Last chance for Kael to tell you himself before I do it for him.

Something cold settled low in my chest, spreading out slowly.

"She's the only one with both pieces," I said, thinking out loud now more than talking to Elara. "The cabin. Wren. She's the one thread that runs through both."

"So call her."

"And say what. That Lila overheard something in a hallway and I'm about to accuse the closest thing to a second mother I've got?"

"Say anything, Kael. We have five minutes." Elara's voice broke on the last word, and that broke something loose in me too, watching her try to hold herself together over a mess that wasn't even hers to carry.

I called before I could talk myself out of it, thumb hovering over her contact photo for one second too long before I finally pressed it.

Two rings, then her voice, warm and easy the way it always was. Too easy, if she was really the one behind this.

"Kael. This is a surprise. Is everything okay?"

"Someone's threatening Elara." I watched for a reaction I couldn't actually see through the phone, listening instead for anything off in her tone. "They know about the cabin. About Wren. Things only you and Dad ever knew together, the same two people, every time."

Silence stretched out on her end, long enough to make my stomach drop clean through the floor of the car.

"Kael." Her voice had changed completely, gone quiet and careful in a way I'd never heard from her. "I need you to listen to me, and I need you to not hang up, no matter what I say next."

"Reyna—"

"It's not me." Fast, like she needed to get the words out before I could cut her off and hang up anyway. "But I know who it is. I should've told you the second I found out instead of trying to fix it quietly myself, the way I always do with everything."

My grip tightened around the phone until my knuckles ached. "Then who."

A pause, a door closing somewhere on her end, like she'd stepped into another room to say whatever came next where nobody else could hear it.

"Your father hired someone years ago to keep tabs on Wren. Make sure she stayed away, stayed quiet, never came back around asking for more. Two months ago that man retired from the job. I don't know exactly what he took with him when he walked out, but he's been asking around about your family ever since. About you specifically. About the cabin."

The world tilted sideways for the second time that day, and I had to grip the steering wheel just to feel like I was still upright.

"You're telling me it's my own family's security. Someone Dad trusted."

"I think so. I don't have proof, Kael, only what I've managed to piece together on my own." Her voice dropped even lower, almost a whisper now. "If I'm right, this was never about money. This is someone who spent ten years learning every secret your family has, and now he doesn't answer to anyone but himself."

Elara's phone lit up on her knee before either of us could say another word, the screen glowing bright between us in the dim car.

I looked down without meaning to, and my blood went cold reading it over her shoulder.

Unknown Number: Time's up. Check your mother's phone.