“So do you.”
Her mouth curved faintly, then tightened with pain.
I moved closer. “Don’t try to talk.”
“You never listen.”
“No.”
“Then I’ll talk.”
“Elena.”
She turned her head slightly toward me. “The man. Is he alive?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes closed briefly. “Good.”
“You know him?”
“No.” A pause. “I don’t think so.”
“His name is Adrian Vale.”
Something passed through her expression. Recognition, but distant, like hearing a song from childhood and not knowing where it began.
“My aunt,” she whispered. “She knew.”
“Knew what?”
Elena swallowed. I reached for the cup on the bedside table and held the straw to her lips. She drank a little, then leaned back, exhausted by the effort.
“She called me last week,” Elena said. “Said she’d made a mistake keeping quiet. Said a man had come back. Adrian. She told me if anything happened, I had to give him the key.”
“To me?”
“Yes.” Elena’s eyes searched mine. “She said your name like she knew you.”
“Where is your aunt now?”
“I don’t know. She stopped answering after that night.”
A cold thread moved through me.
I had already sent men to find Vivian Carter. Now urgency sharpened the order into something else.
“Elena, listen to me,” I said. “I went to the storage unit.”
Her fingers tightened weakly against the sheet. “You opened it?”
“Not the trunk.”
She stared at me.
“You told me not to open it alone.”
“I don’t remember saying that.”
“You did.”
A tear gathered in her eye, not falling. “I’m scared, Dominic.”
There were many answers I could have given. Promises. Assurances. Lies dressed in confidence. Instead, I sat beside her and lowered my voice.
“So am I.”
Her face changed.
Perhaps people had told Elena she was safe her entire life when she was not. Perhaps they had hidden truths in the name of protection until danger arrived wearing the shape of mercy. I would not add another lie to the pile.
“What is happening?” she asked.
“I don’t know all of it yet.”
“But some.”
“Yes.”
She waited.
I wanted to shield her from what I had found. The instinct rose fast and fierce, the same old arrogance wearing a gentler coat. But Patricia’s words held me in place.
She is a patient, not a witness.
And Elena was not mine to manage.
“Your mother knew my father,” I said.
Her breathing changed.
“They were working with Adrian Vale. They found something dangerous before my father died.”
“My mother died in a car accident.”
“I know.”
Elena looked toward the ceiling. “When I was seven, my aunt told me there are accidents people survive and accidents people are handed as explanations.”
I said nothing.
“I hated that sentence,” she whispered. “I thought it meant she didn’t know how to grieve.”
“Maybe it meant she knew too much.”
Elena closed her eyes. A tear slipped free.
I reached for her hand, then stopped just above it. Letting her choose felt harder than taking control.
After a moment, she moved her fingers toward mine.
I held her hand.
“I found a birth record,” I said carefully.
Her eyes opened again.
“There was a note attached. Adrian wrote that your mother refused to name your father because she believed the truth would put you in danger.”
Elena stared at me.