Victoria flicked her cigarette to the ground, crushed it under her heel, and blew him a kiss.
"It was fine seeing you again, Byron," she said. Then, almost as an afterthought: "And one last thing. That question you've had all these years? About Lila? It was me."
Dad tensed.
For a moment, I thought it was going to turn into a battle. My finger tightened on the shotgun trigger.
But Dad didn't move.
Victoria's men followed her out the back door, disappearing into the night.
"Dad," I hissed. "We can't let them go."
He turned to me. There was sadness in his eyes. Deep, endless sadness.
"We have to," he said quietly. "This is my fault. Even more than I thought. And I'll fix it."
We left, then.
Ryker and Marcus stayed behind to intercept the cops—they obviously knew them, greeting them like old friends, badges flashed, official story already in place.
Training exercise. False alarm. Everything's under control. No mention of dead bodies, of course.
The rest of us piled into the SUVs and drove back to Dominion Hall in silence.
When we arrived, I found Dad standing in the front lawn, staring up at the sky.
He looked down when I approached.
There was something in his eyes. Deep regret. Deeper sadness.
"There's one more thing," he said.
I waited.
"What she confirmed," he continued, voice barely above a whisper. "That question I've had for years."
He paused, swallowed hard.
"I don’t know how else to say this, son.” Another pause. Was my father crying? “It was her," he said. "She killed your mother."
The world tilted.
"And that deed," Dad said, his voice hardening into something cold and final, "will not go unpunished."
EPILOGUE
AMELIA
The first thing I noticed was the smell.
Cold air, dry and sharp, carrying woodsmoke and snow and the faint, metallic tang of winter. I stepped out of the car and it hit me like a memory—every walk home from school in February, every hot cocoa at the kitchen table, every night I’d pressed my forehead to my bedroom window and tried to imagine what the rest of the world smelled like.
Now I knew.
And somehow, I was bringing the rest of the world back with me.
Levi came around the front of the rental, his boots crunching over packed snow in my parents’ driveway. He carried my travel bag in one hand like it weighed nothing and smoothed his free palm down the front of his jacket like he was about to walk into a briefing.
