Couldn't. Not yet. Not when I didn't know what to say, how to explain why I'd run, how to promise I wouldn't do it again when we both knew—when I knew—I probably would.
When running was what I did best. Had always done best.
I shoved the phone deep in my pocket and kept following Micah, the weight of Sophie's words settling heavy in my chest like stones.
We didn't go to the War Room this time. Instead, we moved through the mansion—past rooms I hadn't seen before, elegant spaces with high ceilings and expensive art that probably cost more than I'd make in a lifetime, more than most people made in ten. A formal dining room with a table that could seat twenty easily, polished wood gleaming. A library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and leather chairs that looked like they belonged in a movie about money and secrets.
Then the kitchen, where someone—an older woman with gray hair pulled back and an apron tied around her waist—was humming and clanking pots and pans like this was a normal house instead of whatever the hell it actually was. She glanced up as we passed, smiled at Micah like she knew him well, like he was family, didn't even blink at me trailing behind looking like I'd been dragged through hell backward.
We kept walking.
Then we reached the back of the house.
Huge glass doors stood open to the backyard—and calling it a backyard felt like calling the ocean a puddle, like the understatement of the fucking century.
A long, rolling lawn cascaded down toward the water, perfectly manicured, the kind of green that took money and constant attention to maintain, that spoke of sprinkler systems and landscapers and resources most people couldn't imagine. Trees lined the edges, providing shade and privacy from neighboring properties. At the bottom, where the grass met the harbor in a neat line, two huge black yachts were moored to a private pier, sleek and expensive and completely out of place in my world.
This wasn't just wealth. This was power.
And sitting in a chair on the lawn about halfway down, facing the city skyline across the water like he was surveying his kingdom, was a man.
Salt and pepper hair catching sunlight. Broad shoulders that hadn't quite given in to age, that still spoke of strength and capability. Something about the way he held himself—straight-backed even sitting, alert even relaxed, ready?—
Something in me prickled awake. Some recognition I couldn't name yet, couldn't place, like my body knew before my brain caught up, like instinct was screaming what logic hadn't figured out.
The man started to turn when he heard us approach, our footsteps on the grass probably loud in the morning quiet, probably expected.
And when he did—when I saw his face, older but unmistakable, weathered but the same—my world tumbled over and back, spinning like I'd been hit with vertigo, like gravity had reversed and I was falling up instead of down, like every law of physics I'd ever known had just been rewritten.
The man with the salt and pepper hair was my father.
Byron Dane.
Very much alive.
Very much in Charleston.
And very much a gut punch to my soul, to every belief I'd built my life around, to the narrative I'd been telling myself for years.
My father. Who'd disappeared when I was sixteen. Who I'd assumed was dead, or worse—a coward who'd abandoned us.
Sitting in a chair on Micah's lawn like he belonged there.
Like he'd never left at all.
26
SOPHIE
By the time I finished texting Wyatt, my body felt settled.
Not calm in the way people meant when they said calm like nothing could touch you.
More like anchored.
Like I’d driven a stake into the ground inside myself and decided—here. This is where I stand. This is what I want. This is who I am when things get messy.
Beth was in the bathroom brushing her teeth. Natasha sat cross-legged on her bed, scrolling through her phone with that composed, observant quiet she carried. The room smelled faintly of sunscreen and hotel detergent and the ghost of last night’s adrenaline that still lived under my skin.
