Chapter 254

Elias leaves Lucia and Selene to secure the ledger and heads back to Crane Street, his mind still turning over everything from the last twenty four hours in a loop that won’t quiet down no matter how hard he tries to focus on the road ahead of him.

​He steps through the front door of his childhood home, finding his mother sitting at the small kitchen table, sipping tea from a ceramic mug. The sudden surge of color in her face, funded by the secret hand of a dead man, makes Eli’s stomach knot.

​He sits down across from her without pulling off his jacket and stares at her for a long moment, watching the way the sunlight catches the graying strands near her temples.

​“Mom,” Eli begins carefully. “I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me directly.”

​“Ok. Sure.” Emilia sets her mug down, brow furrowing slightly at his intensity. “What is it?”

For the first time in his life, he asks the question he’s never once dared to say out loud, not e