That part hurts more than I expect.
Not because I think he doubts me. Because his attention has gone exactly where it needs to. Past the noise, past the manipulation, straight to the person at the center of the accusation. There is no panic in him. No spectacle. Just the question, laid out plainly.
Silas answers without hesitation.
“I kept her safe,” he says coldly. “I will continue to do so.”
The words settle into the room with a force I can feel in my bones.
For the briefest second, something flickers across my father’s face. Not shock. Not approval. Recognition, maybe. A tiny, private acknowledgment that passes too quickly for me to name. It unsettles me because I do not understand it, because it feels like a piece of a conversation I was not part of.
My mother, thankfully, has no interest in letting the Warden steer this into his version of events.
“What exactly are you trying to imply?” she asks, the edge in her voice is no longer hidden. “That what? My kids are involved with one another?”
The Warden’s eyes move between Silas and me with an infuriating calm look. He takes in our proximity, the tension in our shoulders, the silence hanging between us, all of it. If he notices how quickly my pulse changes under his gaze, he keeps that to himself.
“That is one of the claims that was made,” he says.
The words are barely out before Silas mutters, low enough that only I catch it at first, “I’m going to kill him.”
A fresh spike of dread moves through me, because I know without asking that he means Kadin.
Not as some dramatic figure of speech. Not as a joke. The threat sits in his voice with too much sincerity to dismiss.
Silas takes one step toward the table.
It isn’t rushed. That is what makes it frightening. There is no wildness in the movement, no reckless lunge that could be dismissed as temper. Just one deliberate step, the kind a person takes when he has already chosen violence in his head.
Before he can take another, my father speaks.
“If anything was going on, I’d know.”
The sentence cuts through the kitchen cleanly enough that even Silas stops.
My father’s voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to. He sits there with one hand still on the table, coffee gone cold inside theWarden’s cup, his whole body arranged with the kind of stillness that only ever means someone dangerous has finally gotten tired of pretending to be agreeable.
“I did my research after Kadin stepped foot in my house,” he continues. “The Andersons have done their fair share of donations to local law enforcement to cover up their son’s reckless behavior. St. Augustine, from what I can tell, has never exactly been in the habit of turning down a handout.”
The Warden shifts subtly.
It is the first crack I’ve seen in him since we came inside.
My father notices it too.
“So before you come into my house,” he says, anger in every word, “hurling accusations and threatening MY kids, I’d advise you to tread very carefully.”
The room goes so quiet I can hear the little hum of the refrigerator behind my mother.
My father’s gaze doesn’t leave the Warden’s face.
“I am a kind man,” he says. “That does not mean I don’t know how to be cruel.”
The sentence lands like a knife laid flat across the table.
Beside me, Silas goes still. Not calmer. Just arrested mid-motion by the force of it. Whatever he was about to do, whatever was already gathering in him, my father’s voice reaches it, stopping it dead in its tracks.
For the first time since I’ve known him, the Warden looks unsure.
