Chapter 20 #2
The question barely left my mouth before the room tilted.
My knees bent before I told them to, my hand dropping to the desk, then the floor, like I needed something solid to stop the spin.
I crouched there, one hand braced, the other pressing into my stomach as it twisted.
“Oh my God,” I breathed, my voice thin again, hollowed out. “Do you think—”
I had to swallow twice before I could finish it.
“Do you think he’s the one who took Abel?”
The floor dropped out from under me.
My body lost track of where it was supposed to be, my balance slipping sideways before I could catch it.
“I’ve got you, baby.”
One second, I was braced against the floor trying not to throw up, and the next, Henry was pulling me up with both hands, not giving me enough time to disappear into it.
My legs knocked against his as he sat down hard in the desk chair and dragged me with him, settling me across his lap like he needed me close enough to keep breathing for the both of us.
Somewhere in the movement, his shirt vanished.
I didn’t even see him take it off.
All I registered was the sudden press of warm skin against my face when he pulled me into his chest, one hand spreading wide across my back while the other cradled the base of my skull, holding me there through the shaking breath I couldn’t seem to steady.
“Breathe, baby,” he murmured against my hair.
My fingers curled into him immediately, palms flattening against the heat of his ribs. His heart thumped beneath my touch, even in a way mine refused to be, and he kept rubbing his hand up and down my back like he was trying to coax me back into my body one inch at a time.
“I’m right here,” he said quietly. “I’ve got you.”
Henry’s heartbeat didn’t rush.
It didn’t stumble or spike or spiral out the way mine did.
It just kept going. A steady thump beneath my ear that gave my breathing something to follow.
In.
Out.
Again.
Eventually, I let out a long breath against his skin and muttered, “Okay. Yeah. I get why you didn’t want to tell me now.”
His fingers paused briefly at the nape of my neck. “Oh?”
“I’m clearly a fucking nut job.”
His hand landed sharply against my thigh.
“Call yourself that again,” he said calmly, “and I’ll put you over my knee.”
“I’m way too wound up to get turned on right now,” I informed him, wiping at my face before tipping my head back enough to look at him. “But let’s maybe revisit that later, because I would love for you to bend me over this desk and ruin my life a little.”
Henry barked out a laugh so sudden it almost startled me.
“There you are,” he murmured.
Warmth flickered low in my chest at that.
Then his hand tightened at my waist and he leaned forward, catching the edge of the desk and dragging the chair closer. The laptop waited there, screen still glowing faintly.
The second I looked at it again, the knot in my stomach pulled tight again.
“What if it really is him? What if Otto’s the one who took Abel?”
“I’m about to find out.”
Henry’s fingers moved across the keyboard, opening window after window, files and databases appearing faster than I could track them.
I stared. “Do I even want to know how you have access to a federal database?”
A faint smile touched the corner of his mouth. “Connections, baby.”
“SSA Chen gave you this?”
“Not exactly.”
That was absolutely not reassuring. “Henry.”
He stayed maddeningly tight-lipped, eyes scanning lines of information as they loaded onto the screen.
Then he went still.
“What?” I blurted. “What is it?”
Henry clicked into another file.
“William Kellerman’s records stop cold ninety days after the fire. Banking activity. Employment. Tax history. Everything disappears.”
Another screen opened beside it.
“And Otto Keller appears six weeks later.”
“No fucking way.”
“No prior history before that point. No childhood records that survive digitization. No long-term financial trail. It’s manufactured.”
I stared at the screen, then at the yearbook photo still sitting open beside the keyboard.
William Kellerman.
Otto Keller.
Same eyes. Same posture.
Same. Fucking. Man.
“How do you even do that?” I shuddered. “Just… become someone else?”
The arm around my waist tightened. “Ashford had powerful people attached to it. Judges. Politicians. Law enforcement. Men with enough money to make paperwork disappear and new identities appear in its place.”
The idea of it felt rotten in a way my brain almost couldn’t hold onto for too long at once.
Otto—William—whatever the fuck his name really was—had stood in our kitchen. He’d carried groceries up our porch steps and waved at me through the window like he was just some lonely middle-aged man trying to be kind.
And the entire time, he’d been wearing someone else’s face.
Someone else’s life.
If Henry hadn’t been holding me together right now, I wasn’t entirely convinced I wouldn’t be on the floor dry heaving into one of his expensive rugs.
“How do people even live like that?” I asked quietly, staring at the screen hard enough that the words blurred for a second. “Just wake up every day pretend to be someone else?”
Henry’s thumb brushed slowly against my waist.
“They stop pretending after a while,” he said. “Eventually, it just becomes who they are.”
Fuck.
That made it worse.
A cold shiver worked its way up my spine. I pressed deeper against him without thinking about it, needing the pressure of his body there.
Because honestly?
If I’d found this out alone, I didn’t know what state I’d be in right now.
People always talked about love like it fixed things. Like it cured anxiety or healed trauma or magically rewired your brain into something functional and well-adjusted.
Absolute bullshit.
My brain was still a hostile work environment.
But the loneliness?
The constant feeling that I was carrying everything by myself while the world quietly pressed down harder and harder every year?
Henry had touched that and somehow made it lighter.
“When the right people help you, it’s easier than it should be,” he said.
My throat felt scraped raw by the time I managed to speak. “So you think it’s possible then? That Otto took Abel?”
“Yes.”
The answer hollowed me out so fast it was as if somebody had reached into my stomach and scooped everything loose from the inside.
“The victim profiles don’t fully match. The boys taken through Ashford were teens. Teens with less oversight once they disappeared internationally.”
“But?”
“But Otto being connected to Ashford is not a fucking coincidence.”
I stared at the yearbook photo again.
My skin crawled so violently I had to fight the urge to scrub my hands against my jeans.
“He could’ve changed after he left,” Henry said. “People escalate. Adapt.”
“How do we know for sure? How do we prove it?”
“I send everything we found to SSA Chen.”
“That’s it?” The chair creaked when I jolted, and if it weren't for his arms, I would've fallen on my ass. “We just wait?”
“Archie.”
“No, seriously. That man has been standing in my fucking yard for years and I’m supposed to just sit here and—”
“You are not going near him.”
The words came out rough enough to scrape, jaw shifting hard to one side afterward, muscle jumping beneath the skin.
“You are not confronting him. You are not speaking to him alone. You are not stepping foot near that goddamn house unless I’m with you.”
“Henry—”
“No.”
That tone did something terrible to me.
Because part of my brain was still spiraling so hard it felt radioactive, but another part—the awful, selfish part of me that had spent most of its life wanting somebody to choose me first—felt wrapped up in the sheer force of his protectiveness.
“If Otto Keller is William Kellerman, then he spent years around violent men who trafficked children. I am not gambling with your safety because you’re angry.”
I lifted my chin. “I’m not scared of him.”
“I am.”
The words pulled all the fight out of me so fast it left me blinking at him.
This was a man who set people on fire and walked out through the smoke. A man who buried bodies and spent nearly two decades hunting monsters in secret.
And somehow, the thing that terrified him most was the idea of something happening to me.
“You don’t understand what men like that are capable of when they feel cornered. I would rather burn the entire fucking world down than risk something happening to you because I underestimated one of them.”
Heat climbed into my throat.
“I love you,” he vowed. “And I just got you.”
My smile was wobbly. “That’s my line.”
“Say it back, Rabbit.”
“I love you too, Professor.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ll stay away from him?”
“What about my mom?”
Because suddenly every moment Otto spent near her felt poisoned.
Every smile.
Every favor.
Every time she’d trusted him enough to unlock the front door.
“She’s safe.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do, baby. As long as Otto doesn’t know we’ve connected him to Ashford, she’s safe. Men like him survive by blending in and appearing harmless. Drawing attention to himself now would be stupid.”
“We’re not going to warn her?”
“If we move too early and he runs, we may never find Abel.”
Waiting.
God, I was so fucking tired of waiting.
Waiting for police calls.
Waiting for leads.
Waiting for my mom to get out of bed.
Every year of my life had started to feel measured in waiting rooms and dead ends.
“I don’t know how to do that anymore,” I admitted. “Wait.”
Henry pulled me deeper against his chest until his mouth brushed my temple.
“You won’t be doing it alone this time.”