“No.” The answer comes without hesitation. “We couldn’t crack the crypto transfer, but someone paid him.”
Titan nods once. “Do you know who the third man was the night her sister died?”
I lift a shoulder. “No idea. That’s the hole we can’t plug. But Silas is doing a deep dive into Scott-Evans. Hopefully new can find the third man through one of his associations.”
Silence stretches while he thinks. When he speaks again, his voice is steady, certain. “Then you start with him. You find the third man, and you work outward.”
The words settle heavy in my chest.
“Find the third man,” he continues, “and you’ll have your answer. Whoever he is, he’s the thread tying everything together.”
“It’s been a real bitch trying to jog memories from a decade ago,” I tell him.
Titan turns to me, his expression tightening. “You find what you can, then you deal with it. Give the victims the closure they need - time passed does not mean they don’t get their justice.”
“I think Delaney and Scott-Evans are comfortable in the knowledge that the past is buried.”
A muscle jumps in Titan’s jaw. “It isn’t. Predators don’t age out,” he reminds me. “They adapt.”
“Rowan lost her whole family as a result of that day,” I tell him.
“All the more reason to work harder and apply the same rules. She gets the same ending as every other case we’ve handled.”
I give a slow nod, the path forward clear now, solid beneath my feet.
The past doesn’t stay buried. It waits with bated breath.
35
ROWAN
Asister is the first witness.
She knows the original version of you—before the world teaches you how to hide, before you learn which parts of yourself are too much or not enough. She remembers your name when it was still spoken with love instead of urgency.
A sister is shared history carried two different ways. You live in the small house and suffer the same losses, yet you carry different scars. She understands the shorthand of your pain without needing explanations. In the way your eyes meet hers. In the way you inhale, then exhale. The way her silence lingers without her having to sayI feel you.
She won’t always be gentle. She’ll bruise you with her truth, and she refuses to let you disappear quietly.
A sister is where you go when you’re tired of being brave. Not to be fixed, but somewhere you can rest for a while.
And when she’s gone, she doesn’t really leave. She becomes the ache in every quiet room. The ghost beside you when something good happens and there’s no one left to witness it. The reminder that once, you weren’t alone.
Watching Lily and Bethany together, I remember that feeling. What it was like to have someone who knew me before survival hardened my edges. And God—I miss her.
If I’m being honest, Lily Snow leaves me a little stunned.
Ever since Bethany told me her story, I’ve been building a version of her in my head—brave, tragic, untouchable. But even that careful construction doesn’t come close to the woman standing in front of me now.
She’s softer than I expected. Fragile in the way porcelain is fragile: valuable, deliberate, impossible to fake. There’s a composure to her that doesn’t ask for attention and doesn’t borrow strength from anyone else. She simplyis.
She’s intelligent in the quiet way that doesn’t need to prove itself. Beautiful without trying. Ethereal in a way that feels almost out of place in the world as it exists now—too sharp, too loud, too careless.
And then there’s the way she and Titan move around each other.
No touching. No declarations. Just an invisible current that pulls tight whenever they’re in the same room. An understanding that doesn’t need language. Whatever they’ve survived together, it’s carved into both of them.
I don’t need Bethany to explain it to me. I already know that some bonds don’t announce themselves. They hum.
