CHAPTER 2: THE NAME BURIED IN PAPER
Marcus didn’t say anything for a long time.
The only sound in Logan’s ear was the static breath of the phone and the faint crackle of the fire back at Greystone Manor.
“Say it again,” Logan finally said.
Marcus exhaled.
“Elle Hayes,” he repeated. “Same height, same facial markers, same blood type as Elena Marchetti. But legally? She doesn’t exist before eight years ago.”
Logan stood very still.
“Start from the crash,” he said.
“There’s nothing clean about it,” Marcus replied. “The report says guardrail failure. But the engineering file was amended two days after Elena’s disappearance. Someone signed off on structural integrity retroactively.”
Logan’s grip tightened.
“Who?”
A pause.
“That’s where it gets complicated,” Marcus said. “Because the signature belongs to someone inside your family network.”
Silence.
Not shock.
Recognition.
Logan already knew what was coming.
“Vincent,” he said quietly.
Marcus didn’t confirm it immediately.
But he didn’t deny it either.
That was confirmation enough.
At Greystone Manor, Nova was humming softly while drawing on the back of an old envelope. Luna sat beside her, wrapped in a blanket too big for her small frame.
Logan watched them from the doorway.
Two children.
Two pieces of a story that had been rewritten without his consent.
Nova looked up suddenly.
“Uncle Logan?”
He froze slightly.
“That’s what Mommy called you,” she said. “She said you’d come back when the house stopped being sad.”
Logan didn’t know how to answer that.
He knelt beside her instead.
“Who else knows you’re here?” he asked gently.
Nova shook her head.
“Only Mommy… and the bad men.”
That word landed like a blade.
Luna looked up.
“They said not to tell anyone we saw her again,” she whispered. “After she came back.”
Logan’s blood ran cold.
“Came back?” he repeated.
Nova nodded.
“She wasn’t supposed to.”
The fire cracked loudly behind them.
And somewhere deep in Logan’s chest, something he thought had been buried eight years ago began to move again.
May you like
Not grief.
Not confusion.
