Her daughter.
The words felt like glass in my throat. My hands closed around the steering wheel until my knuckles ached, yet the pain did nothing to stop the shit storm inside my skull. Edwina had a child.
I started the engine, and my phone rang before I could pull out.
Elias.
I answered through the car speakers, my jaw already tight. “Tell me you found something.”
A pause came through the line. Too fucking long.
“Hayden,” he said carefully, “you need to listen before you react.”
“I’m not in the mood for warnings.”
“I found records connected to Edwina Rhodes,” he said. “Her current address, employment history, university files. Most of it is clean. Too clean, honestly.”
My grip tightened. “And?”
Another pause.
“She has a kid,” Elias said. “A daughter. Her name is Helena Rhodes. Four years old. Birthday is December fifteenth.”
The air seemed to leave the car.
Four.
Helena.
Her name wasHelena.
So that was who Helena was.
My mind went straight back to Edwina’s face when I had said the name. The panic in her eyes. The way her whole body had gone still, as though I had stepped too close to a door she had spent years keeping locked.
“Say that again,” I said.
“She’s four, Hayden.”
My blood turned to ice, then fire.
Four years old.
The age lined up too well with the years Edwina had disappeared. Suddenly the scar, the silence, and that terrified look in her eyes began fitting together in a way that made something violent crawl up my spine.
“Who’s the father?” I asked.
“I couldn’t find one listed.”
The words hit like a spark dropped into gasoline. “What do you mean you couldn’t find one?”
“There isn’t a father attached to the records I accessed,” Elias said. “No name connected to the birth certificate in anything I could reach. I also checked for marriage records under Rhodes and Carter. Nothing came up.”
My laugh came out sharp and humorless. “So she has a daughter, no husband in the records, and the father is a fucking ghost?”
“I’m telling you someone kept it quiet,” he replied. “Either by choice or with help. The trail is thin.”
“Thin,” I repeated, the word bitter on my tongue.
