CHAPTER 11

KAI

I told him everything I knew while we stood in the ruined study, both of us bleeding in different ways. None of it mattered anymore. We needed answers.

“Everything,” I said again when Elias didn’t respond.

He was still staring at me like he was waiting for the word to somehow change what he’d just heard.

“Start with the letter.”

His hand went to his jacket pocket. He left it there for a second before pulling out the folded paper.

“She’s alive,” he said. “My mother. Or she was. Ashford Hollow. Two hours north. My father knew the whole time and never went after her.”

“Why would he keep that from you for nineteen years?”

“Because he was afraid he’d lead someone straight to her.” Elias swallowed. “Teo thinks he wasn’t the only one who knew the name might still matter.”

Behind me, Renata had gone quiet.

“If Marco let her leave alive nineteen years ago,” she said, “it wasn’t mercy. He doesn’t do mercy. He does insurance.”

“Insurance against what?”

I already knew I wasn’t going to like the answer.

“Against you.”

She looked straight at me.

“Against Salvatore changing his mind. Against someone coming forward and telling the truth about what happened on that dock. Your mother watched her husband take the blame for another man’s crime. A woman like that doesn’t stay quiet for nineteen years because she’s loyal. She stays quiet because someone has something on her.”

Teo stood by the window, both hands wrapped around a mug of coffee he hadn’t touched.

“I drove her out myself,” he said. “Nineteen years ago. If Marco’s people were watching that dock like I always suspected, he’s had all this time to find out where she went.”

“Then he already knows where she is.”

I said it plainly.

“He’s known all this time. The only difference is that we know now too.”

Elias’s face went pale.

“So he doesn’t need the letter,” he said. “He just needs to make sure nobody’s left who can talk. My mother’s the last person who can expose him, and now we’ve given him a reason to believe Salvatore might finally speak.”

No one asked the question.

I did.

“Where is your father?”

The room went silent.

Elias looked at the empty chair where Salvatore should have been. Then his eyes moved to the front door, still hanging crookedly from one hinge.

“He was here when the ambulance took Kai,” he said quickly. “A neighbor was sitting with him. I told her to call me if anything happened, but I never—”

He headed for the door.

“Elias.”

“I have to go.”

He didn’t slow down.

“If he heard about the shooting, he might have—”

The porch creaked.

We all turned at once.

Renata’s hand disappeared into her jacket.

It wasn’t Marco.

Salvatore Marchetti stood in the doorway, wearing a coat over a hospital gown. IV tape was still stuck to the inside of his elbow, and his bare feet were dirty.

He must have walked all the way there.

His eyes found Elias first.

“Elias.”

His voice was barely there.

“Thank God. Thank God, you’re—”

Then he saw me.

His eyes dropped to the dried blood around my collar.

“It’s true,” he whispered. “They said Cassano’s boy was shot at the house on the hill. I thought—”

“I’m alive,” I said. “So is your son. Sit down before you fall over.”

“I walked.”

He said it like that explained everything.

“A nurse told me a name in the hallway. She didn’t know I could hear her.” His fingers tightened around the doorframe. “She said Marco Reyes.”

Nobody moved.

“I haven’t heard that name spoken in this town in nineteen years,” Salvatore continued. “Not once. People learned not to say it around me.”

“Papa.”

Elias hurried over and caught him when his knees nearly gave out. He helped him into the chair Teo had left behind.

“Sit. Please. You’re shaking.”

Salvatore looked at him.

“He called me tonight.”

Everything stopped.

“Marco?” I asked.

The name seemed to suck the air.

Salvatore nodded.

“An hour ago. Maybe less. My phone rang, and I almost didn’t answer.”

“God, I wish I hadn’t.”

“What did he say?”

I kept my voice calm, though it took some effort.

“He said it was a shame what happened at the Cassano house tonight.” Salvatore stared straight ahead. “He said Renata had gotten careless in her old age and that he’d have to clean up after her again, just like he always had.”

His hands were shaking badly now.

“Then he asked me something.”

“What?”

Salvatore finally looked at me.

“He asked if I remembered the name Dahlia Renner.”

His voice cracked when he said the name his wife had lived under.

“He asked if I thought Ashford Hollow still had good weather this time of year.”

Elias made a broken sound.

“He knows,” he said. “He’s known all this time. He’s going there.”

“He didn’t say anything tonight.”

Salvatore shook his head.

“He didn’t have to. A man like that doesn’t call just to talk. He calls because he wants you to know what’s coming. He wants you sitting there, knowing there’s nothing you can do about it.”

Renata was already pulling out her phone.

“I have a car two streets from here. It’s not registered to anyone in this family.”

Her thumb moved quickly across the screen.

“And I know someone who owes me a favor. Marco doesn’t know about him.”

She looked up.

“If we leave in the next ten minutes, we can make the drive in less than two hours. Maybe faster.”

Elias stared at her.

“You’re helping us?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Renata stopped typing.

“Because I’ve spent nineteen years telling myself I was protecting people by keeping them in the dark.”

She glanced at Salvatore.

“Your mother most of all.”

She took a breath.

“I’ve never even met the woman, and I’ve still helped make her life harder than it needed to be. Marco did most of the damage, but I played my part.”

Her expression changes.

“I’m not doing it anymore. If Marco is going after her tonight, I’m going with you.”

Teo spoke from the corner.

“I’m coming too.”

We all looked at him.

“I put her on that boat nineteen years ago. I’ll be damned if I let her face this alone again.”

I looked at Elias.

Then the letter was still clenched in his hand.

Then at Salvatore, sitting there in a hospital gown with an IV still taped to his arm.

Whatever hesitation I had left disappeared.

“Then we go now,” I said. “All of us.”

I looked at Renata.

“And you.”

She met my eyes.

“If that car or that favor turns out to be another lie, don’t expect me to forgive you.”

She nodded.

“I know.”

For a moment, neither of us said anything.

“I’ve spent too long protecting the wrong things,” she said quietly. “I have one chance to do something right. I’m not wasting it.”

Outside, the rain had gotten heavier.

It hammered against the broken window.

Somewhere north of us, Marco Reyes was already on his way to Ashford Hollow.

He was heading toward a woman who had spent nineteen years believing her silence was enough to keep her son safe.

We were about to find out if she’d been wrong.