My eyes were open, and I was fully aware of what it cost.
But that doesn’t make it easier.
If anything, it makes it worse.
Closing my eyes, I let the silence sit.
Then…
“I’ll come back,” I say quietly.
To all of them.
Sophia. Tate. Mom. Every last one of my brothers.
No matter what it takes.
No matter how long.
No matter what name I’m wearing when I do it.
I am coming back.
Chapter Three
RYAN
San Antonio doesn’t feel like anywhere, and that’s the point.
The apartment is on the fourth floor of a building that looks like every other building on the block, with beige walls, gray carpet, and blinds that filter the Texas sun into something flat and directionless. There are two rooms, a bathroom, and a kitchen stocked with the basics and nothing else.
No photographs.
No personal effects.
Nothing that belongs to anyone.
Just a space to exist in while the world believes you don’t.
I’ve been here long enough to memorize every crack in the ceiling above the bed, every sound the pipes make in the morning, and the exact angle the afternoon light hits the far wall before it disappears entirely.
Old habits, I guess. When you’ve got nothing to do, you observe. When you’ve got nothing to observe, you think, and thinking is the problem.
The burner phone sits on the kitchen counter where I left it this morning. I’ve walked past it more times than I’d like to admit.
It has one purpose—contact Sam or the Bureau, nothing else. Those are the rules. They’re not negotiable, and I understand exactly why they exist.
I pick it up anyway.
Standing there in the apartment’s kitchen that belongs to no one, in a city that means nothing to me, I open the keypad.
Her number comes without thinking.
I’ve had it memorized for two years. I could dial it in the dark, half asleep, in the middle of anything. Some things just live in your hands.
I stare at the screen.
Ten digits.