Chapter 33
S unlight spills through the curtains of the guest room as I shut the door quietly behind me. The soft click of the lock feels louder than it should in the stillness. I cross the room to the bathroom, locking that door too, before jamming a towel under it. My phone buzzes insistently in my pocket, but I don’t pull it out until I’m sure no sound can escape these walls. Only then do I answer the call.
“I have an update,” Luis says without greeting.
I lean on the edge of the bathroom vanity, my knuckles pressing into the cold marble. “Go ahead.”
“We finally broke through another section of the files,” he begins, his tone laced with cautious excitement. “I found coordinates. They point to an address in Chicago, specifically a warehouse district on the South Side.”
My stomach tightens. “Which district?”
“The Ironbridge Industrial Quarter,” he replies. “The address is tied to a company called Prairie Forge the way his fingers tighten, the way his mouth grazes the sensitive spot at the base of my jaw. For a fleeting moment, the world outside this room ceases to exist.
But then reality intrudes, unwelcome and insistent. Natalie’s text flashes in my mind, her arrival imminent, pulling me back to the present. I force myself to pull away slightly, breathless, my hands still fisting his button-down.
“Natalie will be here any minute,” I murmur, the words catching in my throat. “I need to go downstairs.”
Silas’s forehead presses against mine, and he exhales heavily, his reluctance palpable. “Come back to me soon,” he says finally. His hand moves from my hair and back to my neck, lingering as if he’s reluctant to let go. “I just want to be with you tonight.”
I nod, swallowing hard, and lean in to press one last kiss to his lips—a quiet reassurance that I don’t want to leave either. “I’ll come find you later,” I promise, my voice barely above a whisper.
“I’ll be here,” he murmurs, his lips curving into a faint smile, his eyes locked on me with a quiet intensity that makes my chest ache. His gaze follows me as I slip off the desk and step away, and I can feel the weight of it on my back as I leave the study.
Walking down the hallway, my thoughts are a tangled web I can’t seem to escape. The coordinates, the servers, Silas’s guarded words. They all circle relentlessly in my mind, each thread pulling tighter, knotting into something I don’t know how to unravel. Silas fights for what he believes in; it’s evident through the changes he’s trying to make and the battles he chooses to fight. I see it in the way he pushes for initiatives that matter, the way he shoulders the weight of a legacy he doesn’t fully agree with. He’s trying to make things right. I’m sure of it.
But then there are the things he doesn’t say. Is he complicit in something he can’t control, bound by forces larger than himself? Or is he biding his time, carefully choosing his battles to avoid toppling the house of cards before he’s ready to rebuild it?
I know the answers are coming, that the truth is hurtling toward me whether I’m ready for it or not.