Same man.
He never could help himself when it came to things he thought needed protecting.
I lean back in the desk chair, the wooden legs creaking under my weight, and stare at the letters like they might rearrange themselves into something that makes more sense.
They don’t. It already makes too much sense. That’s the problem.
Deacon took the job we wouldn’t.The job we couldn’t.
I remember the room and the order that almost destroyed us. The way Mother Superior laid it out like it was nothing more than a task. A line item. A necessary correction.
A family.
A child.
Two, actually.
Too young. Too fucking young.
Shiloh had gone quiet. Ever—already always quiet—had gone still. I’d simply said no, flat and final. Consequences be damned.
Deacon hadn’t argued. Hadn’t pushed. Hadn’t tried to convince us.
He’d just…taken the job.
And then he’d taken the weight. The fallout. The separation that followed. Publicly cut himself off from us like we were something he could afford to lose.
And we let him. Because the alternative?—
I drag a hand over my jaw, the rasp of stubble grounding me back in the present.
Now here she is.
Alive. Not a ghost. Not a memory. Not a mistake.
Fucking Reva Leigh Hart is alive and walking around my house. She doesn’t know how close she is to the truth.
And him?—
He’s been watching her.All these years. Sending her letters. Offering her guidance that she needed. Giving her distance.
Control.
My gaze drops back to the paper in my hand.
“You don’t want guesses,” I murmur under my breath. “You want certainty.”
Yeah. That sounds like you.
Deacon never was a child killer. He never was a woman killer, either, for that matter.
Which means whatever happened that night…didn’t happen the way we were told.
A slow, familiar tension builds at the base of my skull. The kind that means something’s been sitting wrong for too long and I’m only just now noticing it.
We never asked. Not really. We took what he gave us and let the rest stay buried. Because it was easier. It kept us intact. Digging into it meant risking everything we built after.
But now…Now I’ve got a woman in my house who shouldn’t be alive.
