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Chapter Five
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2026-06-26 04:30:29I drove home with tears blurring the road. My phone kept lighting up in my lap. Same unknown number again. I didn’t answer. I couldn’t survive hearing that distorted voice one more time.
When I finally pushed through the front door, Liam was there. He launched himself at me and buried his face in my waist. “Mom, is Grandpa okay? Dad said he’s hurt.” His weight nearly broke me. I dropped to my knees and hauled him in. “He’s stable, baby. The doctors are taking good care of him.” I still felt so hurt but I forced a smile anyway. “Let’s get you to bed.” I tucked him in and stayed until his breathing went even. His tiny fingers stayed curled around mine. Looking at him, so little and trusting, something furious settled in my chest. No one was going to touch him, not while I was breathing. My phone rang on the nightstand. Damien. I slipped out and answered in the passage, voice low. “What?” “I’m still at the hospital,” he said. He sounded worn out. “Your dad’s asleep. How’s Liam?” “He’s terrified. So am I.” A beat of silence. Then the warmth drained out of him. “Good, stay that way. Maybe it’ll keep you from doing something reckless. I’m heading home, don’t you leave.” I hung up before he could say anything else. In the kitchen while I poured water, it sloshed over the rim because my fingers wouldn’t hold still. A knock broke through the quiet. My heart skipped a bit, I picked a knife from the drawer and went to the door, every step careful. “Who is it?” “It’s me,” Damien said. “Open up.” I unlocked it with shaking hands. He stepped in, exhausted then his eyes landed on the knife and the corner of his mouth pulled up. “Going to stab me now?” “Don’t,” I whispered. “Liam’s asleep.” He shut the door, locked it, and took the knife from me like I was a child and set it on the table. “You’re terrified.” “Yes.” The word came out before I could stop it. “Someone called me. They want a drive, if I don’t bring it tonight, they’ll hurt Liam.” For one second he looked like he had been hit. He pulled me in, his arms around me. It almost felt like safety, until he dropped his hands and the softness left his voice immediately. “You should’ve told me the second it happened. Instead you ran. This is why you need me, Lila. You can’t do this alone.” Anger flared immediately. “Stop pretending you care just to insult me.” He gave a humorless laugh. “It’s not an insult, it’s the truth. You started this and now you’ve dragged our son into it too.” His hand came up, thumb touching my cheek. Gentle and possessive. “But I’ll fix it. I always do.” Victoria’s smirk flashed in my head. I stepped back out of his reach. “Why are you really here, Damien? To help me, or to remind me you’re in charge?” He looked at me then looked through me. “Both. You’re still mine, Lila… some paper doesn’t change that.” My phone lit up on the table. Unknown number. Damien snatched it before I could, he hit the speaker. “Who the hell is this?” The voice was warped. “Damien. Good, now both of you listen. Bring the drive to the old family warehouse in one hour or we will send you pieces of your son tomorrow morning.” The call ended. Damien looked scared for the first time tonight. “Stay here with Liam,” he said. “I’ll handle this.” “No.” My voice didn’t shake. “I’m coming.” His hand shot out and caught my arm, grip bruising. “You will do exactly what I say, Lila. For once, listen to me.” Before I could pull away, another text came through. A photo of Liam asleep in his bed came in taken from inside our house minutes ago.
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The Past Between Us 187
Damien did not open the page in the sewing room. He held it the way a man holds something that might cut him if he moves too fast, and he walked out into the hall without a word. My mother stayed in her chair. She did not call after him. She only watched the doorway until his steps faded, then she looked at me with the tired eyes of someone who has finally set down a box she carried for decades.“Go with him,” she said. “He will not want company. Give it anyway.”I found him in the kitchen. The children were still in the yard. Their voices came through the open window, bright and ordinary, and for a moment that sound felt cruel. Damien stood at the counter with the folded page in both hands. He had not smoothed it flat. The yellowed edges stuck up where the creases fought him.“You do not have to read it yet,” I said.“I do.”He set it on the wood and pressed the folds open with his thumbs. The paper crackled. Ink had browned in places. The top lines were a formal order, short and col
The Past Between Us 186
I found my mother in the back room where she kept the old sewing machine. The light was thin. She sat with a shirt in her lap and the needle still between her fingers, though she had stopped moving the moment I opened the door.Damien stayed in the hall. I heard him shift his weight once, then go quiet.“You need to tell me about his birth,” I said.She kept her eyes on the cloth. “I already told your father everything I know.”“You told him a version. The record is redacted. His name is gone. Someone wrote that we should ask you.”The needle clicked against the thimble. She set the shirt down and folded her hands. “Some things stay buried because digging them up helps no one.”“It helps him.”She finally looked at me. The lines around her mouth were deeper than I remembered. “Lila, leave it.”I did not move. “Damien is standing outside this door. He has spent his whole life thinking the man who raised him was his blood. Last night we found proof that the paper was changed. You knew.
The Past Between Us 185
The words left the room silent for a long time, Damiem sat with his hands open on his knees as if the ground under every year of his life had given way at once. He didn’t blink, he didn’t breathe like himself…the man he had called father through childhood and every hard year that followed might never have been the one who gave him life. The name he had carried and the house he had grown inside suddenly belonged to a different story. I watched him from the chair across the table because I didn’t know what else to do with my hands. My father was there too, more gaunt than I remembered, his shoulders folded in on themselves like he had been carrying the weight of this confession for twenty years and only now set it down. The scientist stood near the far wall, his coat still buttoned despite the heat, as if keeping himself contained would keep the rest of us from flying apart.No one moved, then Damien exhaled, and it sounded like something breaking underwater.The scientist spoke aga
The Past Between Us 184
Damien had not spoken since the last sentence about his own past. I watched his face as something shifted behind his eyes, a door I couldn’t see was opening then he closed his eyes. His breath slowed, the room into a hush except for the ticking of the clock and the faint sound of wind against the windows. I did not move, I did not want to break whatever was happening inside him. The first image arrived, he was younger, much younger. Small hands held the corners of a table, voices moved around him, low and clipped, I could not make out the words but I could feel the pressure of them. Then arms came, lifting, carrying him out of a room he recognized without naming, the door closed behind him with a sound. A car was waiting outside. It was strange because there were no windows along the sides, just these dark panels where the glass should have been. When the door closed, the world outside disappeared, leaving only the sound of the engine and the feeling of being pressed in
The Past Between Us 183
We approached on foot, and almost immediately, an older man opened the door before we could knock. The recognition arrived completely and without effort, it felt like a door unlocking that I hadn’t known was locked. He looked at me with the same certainty, he stepped aside and invited us in as if the visit had been expected for years, “Come in,” he said with a low voice. There was something unsettling about the invitation. He didn’t ask who we were, he didn’t ask how we had found him…he didn’t even seem curious about the fact that I had finally arrived at his doorstep. My eyes briefly met Damien’s, neither of us spoke, we followed the man inside. The house smelled of roses, the atmosphere was warm but it did not feel comfortable, it felt heavy like the walls had been holding their breath for a long time. We sat in a small front room that looked so familiar, a kettle sat on a side table, still faintly steaming, shelves lined the wall, crowded with paper and notebooks and
The Past Between Us 182
I waited until the children were out of hearing before I said it out loud.Damien was in the kitchen, rinsing the same mug twice. My father was reading in the other room with the door cracked, I could hear the page turn.I told Damien everything the new memory had shown me. The weight in my palms, the way the air changed after. The certainty that it had been me…that I was the reason the room had gone still.He listened without looking away. He didn’t interrupt, he didn’t ask me to slow down or to explain the parts I couldn’t name. When I finished, he set the mug down and wiped his hands on a towel. Then he pulled the remaining files closer across the table.We began with the names that still sat in the old records from the project. There were not many left, most had been scrubbed, redacted, or buried under aliases that fell apart under pressure but a few were still there, lines of ink that had survived the purge.One of them matched the pieces I could hold, the man had worked inside
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