Byron nodded. “Among other things.”
Levi’s mouth opened, then closed. I could almost hear the mental calculus—every time his family had been pulled back from the brink by a mysterious donor, every near-miss with foreclosure, every semester one of his brothers had scraped through without dropping out for lack of tuition.
They’d credited luck. Anonymous charity. A system that occasionally, miraculously, worked.
All the while, the ghost in the empty box had been signing checks from the shadows.
“Why now?” I asked. “Why bring him here?”
Byron’s jaw tightened. “Because the people we’ve been keeping at bay for years are changing tactics,” he said. “They’re getting impatient. Hungrier. Less predictable. And my sons are in their crosshairs.”
I thought of the anonymous text that had started this whole thing, the blurry screen grab of corporate records, Danes dottedacross them like a rash. I thought of the card at dinner, cream and expensive in my hand.
Ask him about his father. Ask them all.
“Someone wanted us to have that card,” I said. “Someone who knows Levi’s history and yours.”
“And Dominion Hall’s,” Charlie added.
My brain spun through possibilities—disgruntled insider, rival network, government contact with an agenda. The story expanded around us, layers shifting, new seams opening to dig into.
But right now, those were future problems.
The present problem sat next to me, breathing shallowly, his hand still locked with mine like he’d forgotten how to be alone in his own head.
“I used to think anger was my only fuel,” I said suddenly.
Three sets of eyes turned toward me.
“For stories,” I clarified. “For going back into war zones when it would’ve been easier to stay home. For writing about corruption and violence and the ways people in power twist truth into whatever they need it to be. I’d see another mass grave, another burned-out village, and I’d think, fine, I’ll turn you into words sharp enough to cut.”
I glanced at Levi.
“For the last two years, that anger has had your name on it,” I admitted. “Every assignment I took, every piece I filed about betrayal and compromise, a part of me was writing at you. At the man who left me with half a story and a hole in my chest.”
Levi flinched like I’d hit him.
Byron shifted, uncomfortable. Charlie stared out the window again, pretending not to listen.
“But today,” I went on, heart pounding, “I watched you walk into a house full of men who share your last name and find out you’ve been living in only half your own life. I watched you takehit after hit—about your father, your brothers, the lies you were raised on—and the only thing you were worried about was how it might spill onto me.”
I swallowed. My throat felt too tight.
“And I realized,” I said quietly, “that whatever happened two years ago, it came from the same place. The same instinct. You’ve been carrying weight I can’t even see, in rooms I don’t get to enter. You tried to keep me outside the blast radius. It hurt. It still hurts. But I’m starting to understand that it wasn’t about not trusting me. It was about not trusting the people pointing guns at both of us.”
Levi’s fingers tightened around mine. Hard.
“Amelia,” he said, voice raw.
“I’m still furious with you,” I said. “Let’s not get sentimental. You stole stories from me. You took choices away. You broke my heart and didn’t stick around to watch the fallout.”
A humorless huff escaped him. “That sounds about right.”
“But,” I said, “I’m done pretending that’s the whole picture. I know you, Levi. Better than anyone in this house does. You don’t run from responsibility. You run into it. If you walked away from me, it’s because you thought staying would kill me.”
Silence pressed in, thick as desert heat.
Growing up, my parents had fought with the windows open. Nothing ugly—no thrown plates, no slammed doors. Just long, looping arguments about everything from money to my mother’s decision to go back to school. They’d insisted I listen. Not to scar me, they said, but to show me what staying looked like. What working through hard things required.
