Chapter 2
We moved Elena upstairs through the service corridor.
No guests saw her.
That was intentional.
The Rossi family had spent two years believing she was dead.
I wanted the truth before shock became rumor.
The physician said exhaustion, dehydration, bruising, nothing immediately life-threatening.
Again, my standards for relief had become obscene.
Alive had to be enough.
Micah refused to leave her bedside.
He was sixteen.
Tall enough to fight Wade.
Young enough to sit with one hand wrapped around his mother’s fingers as if letting go might return her to the cake.
“Why didn’t you come back?” he asked.
Elena’s face broke.
“I tried.”
Silas was being held three rooms away.
Wade separately.
I stayed near the door.
Not because this was my conversation.
Because Micah kept checking whether I was still there.
Elena looked at him.
“After the marina explosion, Silas found me before Gianni’s men did.”
My jaw tightened.
“What explosion?”
Micah asked.
“The one everyone thought killed me.”
She swallowed.
“It wasn’t supposed to kill me.”
I stepped closer.
“Who caused it?”
Elena looked at me.
“Wade.”
Silence.
“He sabotaged the fuel line?”
“No.”
She shook her head.
“He started the fire after I was already trapped inside the storage office.”
That was different.
Deliberate.
“Why?”
Her eyes moved toward Micah.
“I found out Silas had been approaching waterfront captains using your name.”
Micah frowned.
“My name?”
Elena nodded.
“He told them the Rossi future would eventually run through you.”
My nephew looked sick.
I understood.
Micah was my sister’s son.
Rossi blood.
Young.
Popular with older family members.
A child people could project onto without resistance.
Silas had not been recruiting for himself alone.
He had been building a faction around the boy.
A future Micah never asked for.
Elena discovered it.
Then Silas needed her silent.
The fire gave him a dead woman.
May you like
The funeral gave him a grieving son.
And grief made Micah easier to guide.
