CHAPTER 10

ELIAS

Teo was still talking when I lowered the phone.

His voice was rough and quiet as he spoke about nineteen years of guilt, about everything he’d kept buried for so long. I could hear how much it still weighed on him.

“He’s coming,” I said, slipping my father’s letter back into my pocket. The paper was soft along the folds from how many times I’d opened and closed it in the last hour. “Kai. Apparently, he’s discharging himself against the doctor’s orders. That’s just the kind of person he is.”

“Good.”

Teo didn’t sound relieved. His eyes moved toward the broken front door, where the police tape still hung across the frame.

“You shouldn’t be alone tonight, boy. Not with Reyes still out there.”

“I’m not alone. You’re here.”

“I’m an old man with a bad hip and a bar full of secrets.” He gave me a look. “I’m not going to be much help if Marco Reyes decides tonight is the night he finishes what he started.”

There was no self-pity in his voice. He was just stating the truth.

“But I’ll stand in whatever doorway needs standing in until Kai gets here. That’s the best I can do.”

I touched the letter through my jacket.

Part of me still wanted to read the rest alone. I’d barely gotten through the first line before Teo’s footsteps on the porch had stopped me.

But now it feels different.

Whatever my father had written, I didn’t think I could carry it alone again.

“I want to finish it,” I said. “The letter. I only read the first line before you got here.”

Something changed in Teo’s face. Maybe even relief.

“Then read it, son.” His voice softened. “Whatever’s in there, you have a right to know. Don’t let anyone else decide what you can or can’t handle.”

I sat on the edge of my father’s overturned desk chair, the same chair Teo had used earlier.

Then I unfolded the letter.

My hands had finally stopped shaking.

My dearest Elias,

If you are reading this, then I have failed to protect you the way I swore I would the night you were born, and I am sorrier than any words on this page can hold.

Your mother did not die the year they told you she did.

She is alive. Or she was the last time I heard from her, which was longer ago than I am proud to admit.

She left Ironmouth the same week everything happened. Before you let yourself hate her for that, I need you to understand something. She did not leave because she stopped loving either of us.

She left because staying would have gotten her killed.

The men who controlled what happened next made her a promise. Leave and never come back, and the boy stays safe.

I don’t know if they ever intended to keep that promise. I only know that I agreed because, at the time, I believed it was the only way either of you would live to see another day.

For nineteen years, I’ve let this city believe I killed a boy I never touched. The alternative was telling the truth and putting you in danger before you were even old enough to understand what danger meant.

I don’t expect you to forgive me for keeping this from you. I only want you to understand why I did it.

Every drink I poured instead of telling you the truth, every night I watched you grow up believing your father was a monster, I did because I loved you more than I loved my own name.

Your mother is living, or was, under the name Dahlia Renner. She was living in a town two hours north of here called Ashford Hollow.

I haven’t written to her in years. I was afraid that if I tried, I’d lead the wrong people straight to her door.

But I kept her name, Elias. All these years, I kept it in case the day came when you needed it more than I needed to keep it buried.

I love you.

I always have.

I’m sorry it took a letter I never had the courage to send for you to hear me say it.

Your father,

Salvatore.

The words blurred.

It took me a moment to realize I was crying.

I wiped at my face, but more tears followed.

Nineteen years.

Nineteen years of believing my mother was dead. A name on a headstone I’d never even been allowed to see.

And now I knew she was alive.

Or at least, she had been.

Her name was Dahlia Renner.

She was somewhere in Ashford Hollow.

“She’s alive.”

The words came out barely above a whisper.

I looked at Teo.

“She’s alive. Ashford Hollow. My father knew where she was all this time.”

Teo went still.

“Ashford Hollow,” he repeated.

He said it slowly, as if the name itself meant something.

“Elias, listen to me.”

I waited.

“If your father wrote that name down nineteen years ago and never went after her himself, there was a reason. It wasn’t only because he was afraid of leading someone to her.”

“Then why?”

“Because someone else may have been watching that name too.”

“If Marco Reyes let her leave alive back then, it wasn’t because he suddenly grew a conscience. Men like him don’t show mercy. They keep things they can use later.”

Teo leaned forward, resting his hands on his knees.

“If your mother is the last thing connecting what happened nineteen years ago, and Marco has decided to clean up whatever is left, then that letter isn’t just giving you answers.”

He looked at the pocket where I’d put it.

“It’s giving you a trail.”

“And I’m not the only one who could follow it.”

Before I could answer, headlights swept across the broken front window.

An engine stopped outside.

Then came footsteps fast.

I knew that walk.

One leg was slightly weaker than the other, but whoever it was clearly wasn’t letting that stop him.

Kai.

I stood before the door even opened.

When it did, Kai appeared in the frame, pale and exhausted. His shoulder was heavily bandaged beneath the jacket he’d thrown over his hospital clothes.

Renata stood behind him, keys still in her hand.

I’d never seen that look on her face before.

But there was something else underneath it.

“Tell me everything,” Kai said.

His eyes locked onto mine.

He looked like he was in pain, but he didn’t care.

“All of it. We don’t have time to do this slowly.”