***Ten years earlier.***
Lucian.
The sign out front reads WILLOWMERE HOME FOR CHILDREN.
It is freshly painted, warm gold letters on soft blue, the kind of sign a family puts up when they want their name attached to something that looks like mercy.
I've driven past it twice in my life and never once thought to ask what was actually happening behind the hedges.
"Charitable donation," James says quietly, beside me in the dark of the tree line, binoculars low against his chest.
"Vale Medical funds this place publicly. Ribbon-cutting three years ago, Edmund's photograph in the paper, the whole performance. Nobody looks twice at deliveries here. Why would they? It's an orphanage."
"It's not an orphanage."
"I know," James says firmly. "It's the best cover money's ever bought."
We've be
