Chapter Twenty-Four
MILA
The tension over the call lingered in the house the next morning. No one mentioned it at breakfast, yet unease threaded through the kitchen in quiet ways that made it impossible to ignore.
As Mom prepared coffee, she moved with deliberate focus, her attention more focused than usual. Every motion carried the same contained determination I had seen the last time our lives collapsed overnight and we fled Blackwood.
The memory surfaced without invitation—the horror of what we had seen, the frantic rush to leave before we were next, and the heartbreak of leaving Luke the way I had.
Back then, we were running, and Mom had operated with urgency. This morning, she moved with the same precision, but the urgency had changed. She was preparing to face a different sort of hurdle instead.
Edwardo sat at the end of the table with a mug in his hands, his posture relaxed but his attention constantly shifting toward the windows and the street beyond. Anyone who didn’t know him would’ve missed the subtle vigilance in the way nothing got past his notice.
Mom finished her coffee before she finally spoke. “Mila.” Her voice was deceptively steady. “I need you to come with me downtown this morning.”
The request sat low in my stomach. “Where are we going?”
“A meeting with my FBI contact, Nick Jacobson.” She held my gaze across the table. “It involves Darren.”
The room felt smaller.
Edwardo set his mug down quietly. “I’ll drive.”
Neither of them elaborated further.
I sent Luke and Avery texts letting them know I wouldn’t be in school and that I would catch up with them later. For now, I was spending the day with Mom and Edwardo. There didn’t seem to be any reason to explain more until I understood what was happening myself.
Edwardo drove. He preferred control whenever something uncertain approached. I had learned long ago—first when we knew him years ago, and again after we fled Blackwood—that arguing with that instinct never changed the outcome.
The car moved through coastal streets before merging onto the highway that cut toward the city. Morning traffic built gradually around us, yet Edwardo navigated the lanes with the same calm precision he brought to everything else.
No one spoke for the first fifteen minutes of the drive. Finally, I broke the silence. “Is this connected to the call you got?”
Mom turned slightly in the passenger seat. “Yes.” Her answer carried none of the hesitation I expected.
“What are they investigating?” As far as I knew, Darren’s body had never been found. They must need something more.
Her gaze shifted toward the passing skyline ahead of us. “They have questions about financial activity connected to King Enterprises during the weeks before he disappeared.”
Disappeared. The word landed with quiet force, heavier than if she had simply said dead.
Edwardo kept his eyes on the road. “Questions don’t mean conclusions,” he added evenly.
The tension in my chest remained. Questions could still change everything.
The office building stood several blocks away from the financial district, tucked between two larger towers that overshadowed it from both sides.
Edwardo parked in a secured underground garage and walked us to the elevator without hesitation. The ride to the twelfth floor passed in silence.
When the doors opened, a small reception area greeted us.
A woman behind the desk looked up immediately. “Ms. Callahan?”
“Yes,” Mom answered.
“They’re expecting you.” The woman gestured toward a hallway. “Second door on the left.”
Edwardo walked beside us the entire way. The office waiting beyond the door looked intentionally plain. A conference table occupied the center of the room, surrounded by a wall of windows.
Two people already waited inside, and a man in a charcoal suit stood when we entered. Beside him sat a woman reviewing documents spread across the table.
Mom greeted them with controlled familiarity. “Nick.” She offered her hand.
He shook it. “Adriana.”
She turned slightly. “This is my daughter, Mila. And this is Edwardo Ruiz.”
Recognition flickered briefly in his expression before he masked it.
The woman at the table closed her folder and rose. “Agent Walker,” she introduced herself before we all sat in the offered seats.
Mom began speaking first when Nick prompted her. She laid out the story with the calm precision of someone who’d replayed the timeline hundreds of times in her own mind.
“Darren confided in me several times during the weeks before he disappeared,” she explained. “At first, he framed his concerns as internal disagreements within King Enterprises. He believed certain financial transfers were being routed through offshore accounts without proper oversight.”
Agent Walker listened without interrupting. The man beside her took notes.
Mom continued. “Those concerns escalated during the final week before he vanished. Darren printed several emails and gave them to me for safekeeping, along with some handwritten notes. He believed individuals within the company were deliberately obscuring the paper trail.” She pushed a thin folder across the table.
The agent opened the folder and scanned the contents. Inside were printed emails, transaction summaries, and handwritten notes on lined paper Darren had left behind—the edges torn from a notebook. Those were the pages missing from the notebook Luke and I had found in her dresser.
Agent Walker scanned the documents silently before looking up again. “When did he give these to you?”
“Three days before he went missing.”
“Did he express concern for his safety?”
Mom paused. “Yes.”
The room grew still. “What specifically did he say?” the agent asked.
“He told me he believed someone inside the company knew he was looking too closely at the accounts.”
Agent Walker leaned back slightly in her chair. “And did he name anyone?”
Mom shook her head. “No. He was still trying to confirm his suspicions.”
The agent studied her carefully. “Did he mention Dunn Industries?”
The question hung in the air.
Mom’s expression didn’t change. “He mentioned several outside partnerships King Enterprises maintained,” she answered. “Dunn Industries appeared among them.”
Agent Walker nodded slowly. The man beside her continued writing.
“And the night he disappeared?” the agent asked.
Mom folded her hands on the table.
“He called me shortly after work. He sounded unsettled. He told me he intended to confront someone about the transfers the following day.”
“What happened after that?”
Her gaze shifted to Nick, who gave a slight shake of his head, barely perceptible. “I never heard from him again.”
Silence blanketed the room. Agent Walker closed the folder gently. “This information aligns with several irregularities we’ve been reviewing.” Her delivery was calm, but the message wasn’t.
Mom’s shoulders remained steady, though I knew how much effort that composure cost her. “Does that mean you believe Darren was involved in something illegal?”
“No.” Agent Walker’s tone turned more direct. “It means we believe he may have uncovered something between King and Dunn.” She rifled through the papers one more time. “Do you have anything else from Darren Langley?”
Mom shook her head slowly. “No. I’m sorry. That’s all he gave me.”
There was more, quite a lot. But Luke’s PI had it in his possession, and I wasn’t sure I trusted these two agents enough to say anything about it.
Edwardo shifted slightly in his chair beside me. “What happens now?”
Agent Walker rested her hands on the table. “Investigations involving corporate structures and offshore financial networks take time,” she explained. “However, the documents Ms. Callahan provided offer direction.”
“So you’ll pursue it?”
Agent Walker held her gaze. “Yes.”
The meeting ended without ceremony. No promises of immediate arrests. Just the quiet understanding that something had shifted. Mom had not simply answered questions; she’d pointed investigators toward a path.
Edwardo walked us back to the car in silence. The afternoon sun had already begun its descent behind the buildings when we pulled out of the garage.
For several minutes, none of us spoke as Edwardo guided the car back toward the highway. The city traffic thickened around us.
Mom finally exhaled slowly. “I wasn’t sure how much they were going to ask,” she admitted, her gaze fixed on the buildings passing outside her window. “About Darren. About the night everything happened. About what we saw.”
Confusion swirled in my chest. “That’s why you wanted me there?”
“I didn’t know if they were going to ask questions about how Darren died or what you witnessed that night.” Her expression softened slightly. “I’m sorry I pulled you into that without explaining it first.”
“No,” I answered quickly, though the explanation still felt disorienting. “It’s fine.” I hesitated before adding, “But don’t they already know about what you saw?”
“Nick does,” she replied.
Edwardo’s eyes lifted briefly to the rearview mirror before returning to the road. “He’s keeping his cards close,” he said evenly.
Mom glanced toward him.
Edwardo continued, his tone calm but certain. “I had him checked out. He isn’t going to turn on you. If he doesn’t want you discussing what you witnessed yet, there is a reason.”
I leaned back against the seat, watching the scenery race past the window.
The meeting suddenly made more sense. They hadn’t brought me there for answers. They’d brought me there in case the questions changed. “Do you think it’ll change anything?”
Her answer came without hesitation. “Yes.”
Edwardo glanced at her briefly. “They have a starting point now,” he added.
“That is all they needed.”
We went out to eat and did some shopping. By the time we reached home, dusk had begun to settle across the neighborhood.
Edwardo pulled into the driveway and turned off the engine. I stepped out of the car and couldn’t help but think how the meeting downtown had drawn a line that couldn’t be erased.