We found our way out of the warehouse and the drive back home was wrapped in silence, the kind that pressed hard against my chest. My fingers gripped the hem of my coat in my lap, and I kept replaying Vivienne’s ultimatum in my head: three days, three days to find papers I didn’t even know existed.
Noah’s knuckles were white on the steering wheel. Streetlights slid across his face in fleeting bands of shadow and gold. He hadn’t spoken since we left, but I could feel the war happening inside him between the son who had just been betrayed and the man who refused to let me face this alone.
Finally, he broke. “If she wants those papers, then your mom has them or had them.” His jaw flexed. “Where would she keep something like that?”
I shook my head, a hollow laugh spilling out. “My mother di
