Chapter 5
1639 Words
Elias almost died tonight.
Three hours later, the hospital hallway still smelled like antiseptic and blood. The doctors said he would live. They said it with faces that meant it had been close.
David Chen was in the waiting room downstairs, his phone pressed to his ear, making sure the article kept spreading. Mira sat beside me, her hand on my arm. She hadn’t let go since we left the waiting room.
Raimen stood at the window, looking out at the city. His shirt was still torn. His lip was still swollen. He hadn’t slept. Neither had I.
“You should sit,” I said.
“I can’t.”
He didn’t turn around. His hands were in his pockets. I knew what he was holding. The tie. Folded. Against his heart.
“She knows where we are,” I said.
“She knows where Chen’s office was. We left before she got there.”
“She knows you’re alive. She knows the files are out. She knows her name is on every news feed in the country.”
He turned. His face was tight.
“She’s not going to run.”
“No,” I said. “She’s going to do something else.”
My phone buzzed. Raimen’s did at the same moment.
We looked at each other.
He pulled his out. I watched his face. It didn’t change. That was what scared me. His face went very still, very empty. The way it had been at the altar.
“Raimen.”
He held up his phone. The screen was bright.
ELEANOR STERLING: “I’d like to see my grandson.”
My blood stopped.
I stared at the words. She was here. She was in the building.
“Where is Leo?” I said.
Mira was already standing. “He was in the waiting room. With me. I went to get coffee. There was a crowd at the counter. Someone dropped a tray. I turned for a second—”
The words hung in the air. I saw her face change. Saw the moment she realized what she’d done.
“Where is he?”
She was already moving. We were all moving.
The waiting room was on the first floor. Glass doors. Plastic chairs. A television playing the news—Eleanor’s face on the screen, the article headline scrolling beneath it.
I saw Leo first.
He was sitting in one of the chairs, his hands in his lap, his legs swinging. He was safe. He was okay.
Relief flooded through me.
Then I saw who was sitting beside him.
Eleanor Sterling sat with her hands folded, her back straight, her hair perfect. She was smiling. A man in a dark suit stood by the door—her lawyer, or her fixer, or someone who owed her enough to get her past the security desk without anyone asking questions.
Leo was holding his hands up, showing her the way his fingers spread. The way Raimen’s spread.
I stopped.
Raimen stopped beside me. I heard his breath catch.
“Don’t,” I whispered. “Not here. Not in front of him.”
His hands were fists. But he didn’t move.
Eleanor hadn’t seen us yet. She was leaning toward Leo, her head tilted, her expression warm. The way she’d smiled at the priest while her nails dug into my arm. Two faces. Leo saw only one of them.
“That’s very clever,” she said. Her voice carried. “Your father can do that too. Did you know?”
Leo shook his head. “He didn’t touch the tie.”
“No,” Eleanor said, her voice soft, almost tender. “He was too afraid to touch what was his.”
She reached out. Her fingers brushed the edge of Leo’s collar, where the tie should have been. Just touched it. Lightly. The way you touch something precious.
My stomach turned.
“He’s not afraid anymore,” Leo said.
“No?” Eleanor smiled. “What makes you say that?”
“He came back.”
She looked at him for a long moment. Her smile didn’t change. But something behind it did.
“Yes,” she said. “He did.”
She straightened. She looked up. She saw us.
Her smile widened. She stood up slowly, smoothing her dress, the way she’d done at the altar when she turned from me to the cameras.
“Raimen,” she said. “I was just getting to know my grandson.”
Raimen stepped forward. I grabbed his arm. He stopped.
“Don’t,” I said again.
He looked at me. His face was not empty now. It was something I hadn’t seen before. Not cold. Not angry. Something that had been buried for years, surfacing.
Something that was done being buried.
“I’ll handle it,” he said.
He walked toward her.
Eleanor didn’t move. She stood by the chair, her hands folded, her head high. The man by the door stepped back, giving them space.
Raimen stopped a few feet away. He didn’t rush. He didn’t shout. He stood there, and the room seemed to shift around him.
“You’re going to leave now,” he said.
The words landed like stones.
“I’m going to leave when I’m ready.” She looked at Leo. “He’s lovely, Raimen. He has your father’s stillness. The way he watches. The way he waits.”
Raimen’s jaw tightened. “You’re leaving. Now.”
She stepped closer to him. Close enough to touch. Her voice dropped, low enough that only he could hear. The man by the door turned his back, pretending to look at the television.
I couldn’t make out the words. I saw her lips move. I saw Raimen’s face change—the way it had changed at the altar when his hand moved before he decided. Something cracking. Something he’d been holding together for years.
She stepped back. Smoothed her dress again.
“Think about what I said,” she told him.
She turned to Leo. Her smile was warm again.
“It was lovely to meet you,” she said.
Leo looked up at her. “Are you a friend of Mommy’s?”
“No,” Eleanor said. “I’m your grandmother.”
She walked toward the door. Her lawyer opened it for her. She paused at the threshold, looked back at Raimen.
“The article won’t matter,” she said. “Not in the end. You know that. They’ll print their stories. They’ll call for investigations. But I’ve spent forty years making sure people like me don’t go to prison. You think a few documents will change that?”
She walked out. The door closed behind her.
The room was very quiet.
Leo sat in the chair, his hands in his lap, looking at the door where Eleanor had gone.
No one spoke. No one moved.
The silence stretched, heavy and thick. I could hear my own heartbeat.
Raimen stood where she’d left him. His hands were fists. His face was white.
I went to Leo. I knelt in front of him.
“Are you okay, baby?”
He nodded. “She knew my name.”
“I know.”
“She said she was my grandmother.”
I looked at Raimen. He hadn’t moved.
“Is she?” Leo asked.
Raimen turned. He walked toward us slowly, the way he’d walked toward Leo in the mountain house, like a man approaching something he’d been searching for his whole life. He knelt beside me. He put his hand on Leo’s.
“Yes,” he said. “She is.”
Leo looked at his hand, then at Raimen’s face.
“She said you were afraid.”
Raimen’s throat moved. “I was.”
“You’re not anymore.”
It wasn’t a question.
Raimen shook his head. “No. I’m not.”
Leo smiled. He leaned against me, his small body warm, his hand still in Raimen’s.
I looked at Raimen. “What did she say to you?”
His jaw tightened. He didn’t answer.
“Raimen.”
“She said if she falls, she’s taking all of us with her.”
His voice was flat. Like he was repeating something he’d already started to believe.
I sat with the words for a moment. The weight of them. What it meant for someone to promise that. What it meant for someone to believe they could deliver.
“She doesn’t have anything left,” I said.
“She has money. She has people. She has a lifetime of debts she’s collected.”
“The article is out. The world knows what she did.”
“The world knows,” he said. “That doesn’t mean the world will stop her.”
I looked at Leo. At his hand in Raimen’s. At his small face, peaceful now, the fear gone.
“She’s wrong,” I said.
Raimen looked at me. His face was empty again. But his hand, still holding Leo’s, was steady.
“I know,” he said.
He said it like he was trying to make it true.
Mira was crying quietly behind us. David Chen appeared in the doorway, his phone pressed to his ear, his eyes on Raimen, on Leo, on me.
I didn’t move. Neither did Raimen.
The door Eleanor had walked through was still closed. She was out there. Doing whatever she did next. The article was out. The world knew. But she had said it wouldn’t matter. And she had meant it.
In this room, my son was holding his father’s hand. He was three years old. He didn’t know what his grandmother had done. He didn’t know what she was still capable of.
But she had just made it clear: this wasn’t over.
And somewhere in the city, she was already planning the next move.
- Writer
