THE FATHER'S SHADOW
1496 Words
Lysander's POV
The room goes silent.
I feel their eyes on me — all of them, even Irene, whose gaze is clinical and curious and somehow more unnerving than outright suspicion.
My father.
I shouldn't have said it. The words came out before I could stop them, dragged up by logic I've been trying to avoid since the moment we started discussing a patient, methodical stalker with resources and a vendetta.
Victor Ashworth.
The man who raised me. The man who taught me to hold a scalpel before I could ride a bike. The man who harvested organs from homeless patients and sold them on the black market while I did homework in the next room, oblivious.
The man I destroyed.
"Lys." Dante's voice is careful. "Your father is in prison."
"For three more days."
Another silence. Heavier this time.
"What?" Kieran's single word cuts through the air.
"He's being released Friday." I keep my voice level. Detached. The same voice I use when delivering terrible news to families in the hospital. "Early release for good behavior and prison overcrowding. I got the notification two weeks ago."
"And you didn't tell us?" Dante's composure cracks. "Victor Ashworth is about to walk free and you didn't think that was relevant information?"
"I've been processing." The excuse sounds weak even to me. "He's my father. The man who—" I stop. Breathe. "I needed time to figure out how to handle it."
"Handle it how, exactly?" Roman asks. His political mask is in place, but I can see the calculation beneath. "Victor Ashworth has every reason to want revenge. You testified against him. Dante's testimony sealed his conviction. We're all connected to his downfall."
"I know."
"Then you know he might come after any of us. Or all of us." Roman's eyes shift to Irene. "Or the people we care about."
The implication lands heavily.
If my father is behind the stalking — if he's been watching Irene for eighteen months, waiting for her to return to New Avalon — then I've brought this threat into her life.
Me. My blood. My legacy.
I look at her. She's watching me with those amber eyes, reading me the way she reads everyone. I wonder what she sees. The surgeon who makes her laugh? The son of a monster? Both?
"Tell me about him," she says.
"Irene—" Dante starts.
"I'm a criminal psychologist. This is literally what I do." She doesn't break eye contact with me. "Tell me about your father, Lysander. I need to understand him if we're going to protect against him."
We. Not you. Not they.
She's including herself. Taking a place in this fight rather than being protected from it.
Something in my chest loosens slightly.
"Victor Ashworth," I begin, "was one of the most respected surgeons in New Avalon. Chief of Surgery at New Avalon General before me. His father built the hospital. Our name is on three wings."
"Old money," Irene says. "Medical dynasty."
"Yes. But old money gets old. The family fortune was dwindling when my father took over. He needed income. He found it."
"The organs."
I nod. The word organs sounds clinical. Clean. What my father did was neither.
"He targeted patients who wouldn't be missed. Homeless people brought in from the streets. Undocumented immigrants. People whose families wouldn't ask questions or couldn't afford lawyers." I hear my voice go flat. Distant. "He harvested what he could sell and disposed of the rest. For years. Decades, maybe. I don't know when it started."
"How did you find out?"
The question I always dread.
"I was sixteen. I wanted to surprise him at the hospital — bring him dinner, bond with my distant father, the usual teenage desperation." The memory surfaces: sterile hallways, the wrong turn, the operating room that should have been empty. "I walked into the wrong room at the wrong time. Saw something I couldn't unsee."
"And you reported him."
"Not immediately. It took me six months to gather evidence, to make sure I wasn't wrong, to find the courage." I laugh, but there's no humor in it. "Six months of living in that house, eating dinner across from him, pretending I didn't know he was a murderer."
Irene's expression doesn't change. No horror, no pity. Just that clinical attention.
"What happened when you reported?"
"He was arrested. Tried. Convicted. My mother testified that she knew nothing — which might even be true, she's exceptional at seeing only what she wants to see. She got immunity. He got twenty-five years."
"Of which he's served twelve."
"Good behavior." The words taste like ash. "He was apparently a model prisoner. Helpful to guards. Kind to other inmates. Running educational programs."
"Building a network," Ezra says quietly.
I look at him. "What?"
"That's what you do in prison if you're smart. You don't just serve time — you build relationships. Accumulate debts. Create a power structure that extends beyond the walls." Ezra's eyes are distant. "When you get out, you have an army waiting."
"You think my father spent twelve years building an army?"
"I think your father spent twelve years planning revenge." Ezra's gaze meets mine. "And the most patient, methodical form of revenge would be to study his targets. Learn their weaknesses. Watch the people they love."
Everyone looks at Irene.
She absorbs their attention without flinching.
"The stalking started eighteen months ago," she says. "Which would be—"
"Just after my father's parole hearing was scheduled," I finish. The timeline clicks into place with sickening precision. "He knew he was getting out. He started preparing."
"By watching Irene."
"By watching Dante's weakness." I run a hand through my hair. A nervous gesture I've never fully eliminated. "He knew he couldn't get to Dante directly — too protected, too powerful. But a sister? Living alone in London, no security detail, unaware of the threat?"
"The perfect target," Kieran says. His voice is ice. "Patient. Methodical. Exactly the profile Irene described."
"But the camera reflection doesn't fit," Irene says. "Your father wouldn't make that mistake. He's too careful."
"Unless he wanted us to know," I say.
"Why? Why reveal himself now?"
"Because I'm out on Friday." A new voice — old, cultured, familiar — cuts through the room.
Every head turns.
My phone is ringing. I didn't notice it vibrate. On the screen: UNKNOWN NUMBER. But somehow — somehow — we're hearing the voice through Dante's speakers.
He's hacked the system.
"Hello, son." My father's voice is warm. Paternal. The voice that used to read me bedtime stories. "It's been too long."
---
The room explodes into controlled chaos.
Kieran moves to the security panel. Ezra is already on his phone, barking orders to his team. Roman stands, political composure abandoned, fury naked on his face.
But I can't move.
My father's voice fills the room — fills me — and I'm sixteen again, walking into that operating room, seeing what I was never supposed to see.
"Victor." Dante's voice is deadly calm. "You're making a mistake."
"Am I? I don't think so. I've had twelve years to plan this, Dante. Twelve years to watch, and wait, and prepare." A pause. "Your security is impressive. But not as impressive as you think."
"What do you want?"
"What I've always wanted. My life back. My legacy. My son."
My body goes cold.
"I'm not yours," I say. My voice comes out steadier than I feel. "I stopped being yours the moment I saw what you really are."
"Lysander." The warmth in his voice doesn't waver. "You were always too idealistic. You saw one surgery — one moment of necessary pragmatism — and decided I was a monster. But we're family. Blood is blood. And blood always comes home."
"I will never—"
"You will. When I'm done, you'll have no choice." His tone shifts. Something darker beneath the warmth. "I've been watching, son. All of you. For years. I know your patterns. Your weaknesses. Your attachments."
A pause.
"Miss Morretti. You're even lovelier in person than in photographs."
Irene doesn't flinch. Doesn't react at all.
"Dr. Ashworth," she says calmly. "I've studied your case file. Narcissistic personality disorder with sociopathic features. Grandiosity masked as paternal warmth. A need for control so absolute that you'd rather destroy your own son than accept his autonomy."
Silence on the line.
Then: a laugh. Low, genuine, delighted.
"Oh, I like her. I can see why they're all so obsessed." Another pause. "We should talk, Miss Morretti. Psychologist to psychologist. I think we'd find we have a great deal in common."
"I doubt it."
"We'll see." His voice hardens slightly. "Friday, Dante. I walk free on Friday. And then we'll discuss what you owe me. All of you."
The line goes dead.
The room is silent.
And I realize, with a certainty that settles into my bones like ice, that everything is about to get much, much worse.
End of Chapter Ten
- Writer
