The Heartless Warden

The rain brought Elliot Vance home. His mother opened the door, and her face did the thing you do when a bill arrives that you already know you can't pay.

He's eighteen. He was dead for a night. His heart hasn't beaten since the field.

What keeps him upright is Milo — fifteen, his brother, the one who sews name patches into coat linings and never asks where Elliot went. Elliot would spend anything to keep Milo in that house, in that version of himself Milo still believes in.

But Elliot knows what happened on Coldbrook Street. He knows who was in that house when the family died. Milo doesn't know he knows, and Milo doesn't remember all of it either — thirty-odd cracked red wax seals in his drawer, and a hole in the year he won't talk about.

So Elliot takes the only job that lets him sit on the file. A probationary seat with the Wardens. No salary. A chief who uses him. A lodger named Cross who asks short questions and then waits.

He isn't trying to solve the murder. He's trying to keep his brother.

Content note: violence, a household that hurts its own, grief that doesn't tidy up.