Beside me, Silas goes still in a frightening, the kind of stillness that always means whatever he is feeling is too dangerous to let show all at once. His jaw tightens hard enough that I can see the muscle jump beneath his skin.
“I have a feeling,” he says, his voice low, edged with something fearful enough to make my stomach turn, “it has something to do with a little pest I should have put ten feet underground.”
The words come out with enough venom to tell me I don’t need to ask who he means.
Kadin.
I don’t have time to decide whether that confirms my suspicion or deepens it, because Silas is already moving. He starts toward the front door with the kind of purpose that makes me want to grab his arm and stop him, not because I think he’s wrong, but because I know that look on him now. It is the look he gets when anger has already chosen a direction and all that’s left is deciding how much damage it’s going to do when it arrives.
Falling in behind him immediately, I'm only a few steps back, my pulse climbing harder with every foot we get closer to the house.
The front walk suddenly feels too short. The whole evening has changed shape so quickly that my body hasn’t caught up yet. A minute ago I was pinned half against the car with his mouth at my jaw and his hands at my hips, too distracted to care whether my parents were home. Now all I can think about is the Warden’s voice, the article, the texts, Kadin’s face when Silas warned him, and the horrible certainty that whatever waits behind that front door is not going to stay contained for long.
Silas reaches the porch first.
He doesn’t hesitate, his hand closes around the knob.
Even from behind him I can see the way his shoulders square, the way he draws one controlled breath as if he is tryingto force the violence back down into something more useful before he walks inside.
Stopping just behind him, I'm close enough to feel the tension radiating off his body, close enough that if this goes bad, I know I’m going to step in whether I should or not. My fingers curl uselessly at my sides.
The moment we step inside, the whole house feels wrong.
Not loud. Not chaotic. Worse than that. Quiet. The kind of stillness adults create when they’ve already been sitting in something uncomfortable long enough for the air to thicken around it. The front door shuts behind us, the sound pulling every eye in the kitchen our way at once.
The Warden is sitting at our kitchen table.
That alone is enough to make my skin crawl. He looks obscenely comfortable there, one hand curled around a coffee mug as if this is some ordinary afternoon visit and not an intrusion sharp enough to poison the whole room. My mom is standing near the counter with her arms folded too tightly across herself, her face composed in that brittle way it gets when she’s trying not to let anger show too early. My dad is seated at the table across from the Warden, shoulders squared, one forearm resting on the wood, his expression much harder to read.
Every head turns.
The Warden’s gaze settles on Silas first, a little smile touching his mouth, one that makes me hate him on sight even more than I already do.
“Silas,” he says in acknowledgment.
But it’s me who speaks before Silas can.
“What are you doing here?”
The question comes out sharper than fear probably permits, but I do not care. Not anymore. Not after the call, not after the driveway, not after the way he keeps inserting himself intoSilas’s life like ownership and concern are somehow the same thing.
The Warden lets out a small scoff, setting his mug down with deliberate care.
“See what I mean?” he says, glancing briefly toward my parents as if my tone has just proven something useful. “I do fear that Octavia and Silas may be forming an unhealthy attachment to one another.”
The sentence lands like acid.
My mother’s brows pull together immediately, but the Warden keeps going before either of us can interrupt him, slipping into that awful, measured cadence men like him use when they want lies to sound procedural.
“First the phone call to me,” he says, “where she saw fit to use some rather crude language. Then the incident at the party where they were both present. And now Kadin Anderson’s claims regarding violence from both of them.”
Silas goes very still beside me.
The mention of Kadin sends something mean through my chest, but before I can say a word, my dad's voice cuts cleanly across the room.
“Is what he’s saying true, Silas?”
He doesn’t look at me when he asks it.
