Chapter 21 #2
“I thought you said you two just met.”
“We did,” Otto said calmly. “Dean Randolph brought something to my attention that we felt warranted a conversation.”
My eyebrows lifted. “Are we talking about the way he tried to gut my funding package?”
Randolph’s expression barely shifted, but I saw the irritation flicker there for half a second.
“That was an administrative oversight,” he said evenly. “One that’s already been corrected.”
“Yeah,” I shot back. “Because Henry fixed it.”
The second his name left my mouth, the air at the table changed.
Randolph folded his hands together loosely atop the table. “Yes,” he said carefully. “Henry is exactly who we wanted to speak to you about.”
He gestured toward the empty seat across from him. “Won’t you sit down?”
I folded my arms across my chest. “No, I don’t think I will.”
Otto sighed softly beside me, the sound carrying the exact same patient tone he used whenever my mother forgot to lock her back gate or insisted she could carry groceries herself.
Manufactured concern.
I saw it now.
Every goddamn piece of it.
“Archie,” Otto started.
“No, seriously.” I laughed once under my breath, too tense for it to sound real. “You invited me to lunch, not some weird intervention about my professor.”
Randolph cocked his head. “He’s not just your professor, is he?”
The words slid into my spine cold as rainwater. “I don’t know what you’re implying.”
Which was… technically true.
Because if this turned into a conversation about me sleeping with Henry, I might actually throw a latte at somebody.
But another part of me—the part that had spent the last two days pulling apart Ashford and Otto and dead boys and fake names—understood instinctively that this wasn’t really about my relationship.
This was about control.
Randolph leaned back slightly in the booth, eyes steady on mine.
“We think you’re involved with a very dangerous man.”
“Is that so?”
My voice came out calmer than I felt.
Inside, fury kept climbing higher and higher, hot enough that it felt impossible my skin was containing all of it.
These men sat here with their careful voices and measured expressions trying to feed me half-truths about Henry like I was na?ve enough to swallow them whole.
Like I hadn’t spent the last two nights wrapped around him while he told me about Philip with grief carved straight through his voice.
Like I didn’t know exactly what kind of monsters sat in front of me.
Otto gestured toward the booth again. “Archie, sit down.”
“No,” I said flatly. “You wanted me here? Fine. Say whatever little speech you rehearsed.”
Randolph’s expression tightened briefly before smoothing back out. “Professor Rothwell is not a safe man.”
The words settled over the table so calmly that for a second, I just stared at Randolph, trying to figure out how somebody could say something that insane with a straight face.
He’d watched me carefully, as though he’d already decided how this conversation would go.
“Maybe Henry never told you this,” he said, folding his hands together on the table, “but I knew him when he was a student. I taught at Ashford during that time.”
I didn’t move.
“Henry was very intelligent,” Randolph continued. “Exceptionally so. But he was also difficult. Withdrawn. Angry. There were concerns about emotional instability even then.”
Oh, fuck you.
The way he talked about Henry made something ugly turn over in my stomach. As though he had been some troubled case study instead of a seventeen-year-old kid surviving abuse and grief.
“And?” I asked flatly.
Randolph’s eyes stayed fixed on mine. “Over the years, evidence has surfaced suggesting the Ashford fire may not have been accidental.”
“How do you figure?”
Randolph glanced briefly toward Otto before looking back at me. “There were inconsistencies in the original investigation. Witness statements that changed. Staff concerns that were quietly buried after the tragedy.”
“Okay,” I said slowly. “But you’re accusing somebody of setting a building on fire. That usually requires motive.”
That was the first time either of them hesitated. It was small, but I caught it.
Because there it was.
The thing they were avoiding.
Philip.
They knew there was a motive, but saying his name out loud would mean exposing how much they actually knew about what happened at Ashford. And if they admitted that, then this stopped being a concerned conversation about my professor and became something much uglier.
These fuckers were probing to figure out what Henry told me.
Otto leaned forward slightly, voice gentler now.
“Archie, Dean Randolph reached out because he’s worried about you.
And after your mother mentioned you were seeing someone older…
” He exhaled through his nose. “I got concerned, too. I just wanted to make sure you understood who you’re wrapped up with. ”
A laugh almost escaped me. This man had spent years standing in our kitchen pretending to be safe while wearing somebody else’s name. Now he wanted to warn me about dangerous people?
The hypocrisy was so massive it made me feel dizzy for a second.
“It’s important to know who you’re wrapped up with,” I said quietly.
Otto’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.
I held his gaze.
“Isn’t that right, William?”
The air around the table tightened so fast it felt like somebody had sealed the room shut.
Randolph stood and walked toward the counter while Otto stayed seated beside me, and for the first time since this conversation started, the softness in his face began to melt away.
The girl behind the register looked confused when Randolph spoke to her. A minute later, the music cut off. Students started gathering backpacks and coffee cups with annoyed mutterings as employees moved toward the doors.
My pulse started hammering harder.
“William?” Otto repeated calmly, like the name meant nothing to him.
“Cut the shit,” I spat, stepping toward the table so fast my shoes screeched against the floor. “I know who you are.”
Otto stayed seated, but I saw it then—that tiny shift behind his eye
Calculation.
“I know you taught at Ashford,” I continued, my voice shaking hard enough that I hated it. “I know William Kellerman disappeared after the fire, and Otto Keller magically showed up six weeks later with no fucking past. I know you changed your name.”
Adrenaline tore through me fast enough that my fingertips buzzed. I couldn’t stop moving, pacing once beside the booth before turning back toward Otto again because standing still suddenly felt impossible.
“You drove me to school,” I said, and my voice cracked this time. “You sat in our house.”
Otto stood like he was approaching a frightened animal.
“Archie—”
“Did you take my brother?”
The rain battered harder against the windows now, wind rattling faintly through the glass.
Otto said nothing, and the pressure inside me snapped.
I grabbed the nearest stool and hurled it across the café.
It crashed hard enough against the wall that Randolph flinched backward while metal legs scraped violently across tile.
“Did you take my brother?” I screamed.
The warmth in his face just… disappeared.
His eyes emptied in a way that made cold spread violently through my stomach, because I realized I had never actually seen him before now.
Not really.
Every smile, every patient little nod while helping me with homework had been performance layered over performance layered over performance.
And underneath it?
Nothing human.
“Did you?” I demanded.
“Yes.”
For a second, I genuinely thought I might throw up right there on the café floor.
Abel.
I pressed both hands against the edge of the table because suddenly my body didn’t feel connected correctly. My skin had gone freezing cold while heat climbed violently up my throat.
“You—” I swallowed hard against the nausea clawing upward. “You had him?”
Otto’s jaw shifted once. “Yes.”
My vision blurred.
Rage. Grief. Relief. Horror.
All of it slammed together so hard I couldn’t separate one feeling from the next.
“Why?” I choked out. “Why Abel?”
Otto looked at me for a long moment before answering. “You weren’t the type men paid well for.”
My stomach folded in on itself so violently I nearly doubled over.
Blond.
Abel had been blond.
Suddenly, I couldn’t stop seeing my brother at seven with sun-bleached hair falling in his eyes while he laughed at something stupid in the kitchen.
Otto hadn’t seen a kid. He’d seen a product.
“And me?” I asked hoarsely. “Afterward? You could’ve taken me too.”
“I could’ve.”
Randolph spoke quietly from beside him. “Kellerman was never motivated by money the way the others were. He enjoys proximity and embedding himself in people’s lives. Watching grief happen up close.” His mouth tightened faintly. “That’s what makes him dangerous.”
“I’m going to prove what you did,” I swore.
Otto grinned. “Good luck.”
Then his hand shot outward, fingers clamping around my throat hard enough to slam me backward against the edge of the table.
Pain exploded beneath my jaw.
I gasped, grabbing at his wrist while adrenaline detonated through me so violently my vision flashed white.
“You should’ve stayed out of this,” he snarled.
“Fuck. You.”
I drove my knee upward as hard as I could.
Otto doubled over with a strangled sound just as the café doors slammed open hard enough to rattle the glass.
“ARCHIE!”
Henry’s voice tore through the room.
I stumbled backward coughing, one hand flying to my throat while air scraped violently back into my lungs. My vision blurred instantly from adrenaline and lack of oxygen, but I still saw him.
Daddy.
Fury had hollowed him out.
His coat hung open from where he’d clearly shoved it on in a hurry, rain darkening the shoulders and the edges of his hair.
Behind him came two men in tactical vests with FBI stitched across the front and a woman with dark hair twisted into a severe bun, her expression so sharp and controlled it immediately clicked into place.