Chris’s eyes close. “Yeah. I heard a noise, and I just knew it was a person.”
“How did you find me?” I ask.
His eyes open.
“Your name is still registered as the owner of my truck.”
The words sit in the room for a moment.
Beside me, Stefano goes completely still.
“My name?” I ask.
Chris nods. “I got pulled over a few months ago because of a broken taillight. I handed the officer the truck’s papers, and that’s when I saw it. First time I’d ever had to touch those documents. My boss told me everything was in order, and all I had to do was drive the truck where it needed to go.”
All of those trucks were stored away after we closed the company.
“I thought maybe you owned the company,” Chris continues. “Or maybe you used to. I didn’t know. But I felt that something was off. Seeing your name on those papers and never hearing it from anyone at the company, I knew something wasn’t right. I’ve been trying to find you ever since. But your name is listed all over the country. The fact that your men found me two days ago right as I started a new route shocked me, but I couldn’t be more grateful.”
“Your boss’s name?” I ask.
Chris swallows.
“Victor Dane.”
Foster lifts his head from the laptop. “That’s not the name of the man you said was responsible for you closing the place down.”
“No,” I say, my attention moving to Stefano. “That was Mark Dane.”
My brother’s jaw tightens.
“Victor’s his father.”
The old air between us changes.
Not with surprise.
With recognition.
There are some names a family never truly buries. They may fade from daily conversation, but they remain somewhere beneath the surface, waiting for a reason to rise again.
Victor Dane.
The father of the man Stefano killed for betraying our rescue network.
The father of the man who tried to turn desperate people into profit.
“He says he’s just operations,” Chris says. “But everyone knows he runs the place.”
Stefano sits beside me, silent and still.
His eyes haven’t left Chris since the man began talking.
I brought my brother here for this exact reason. Stefano hears lies the way some men hear music. One wrong note, and he knows.
“Victor knew Maverick’s name was registered under all those trucks,” Stefano says quietly.
Chris looks between us. “What?”
