“Why does Marcus care about Willowbrook so much?” I ask.
“Because he owns TrueBond,” she says. “But that's only part of it.” She pins me with a look. “Three years ago, he personallyfunded the Rift monitoring expansion. The sensors, the data collection, all of it. His money, his equipment, his analysts.” My brain catches on that. “Why would a dating app developer fund Rift monitoring?”
“Because the Council commissioned it, and Deveraux bid on the contract. It’s not complicated, Silas. He’s a businessman. He saw an opportunity, and he took it.”
“But why would he care about Rift data?”
Helena exhales through her nose. “He doesn’t care about the data. He cares about the correlation. Omegas in high-Rift areas have lower bonding success rates. Lower bonding rates mean lower TrueBond adoption. Lower adoption means less revenue. He wants the Rift stabilized so his platform can work the way it’s supposed to.”
“That’s circular. The Rift destabilizes Omegas, and Omegas can’t bond because of the Rift, and the solution is to stabilize the Rift so Omegas can bond on an app that only exists because Omegas need help bonding?”
“I didn’t say it made sense. I said that’s what he wants.”
I lean against the wall. The pieces are moving, shifting, but they still won’t line up. Marcus Deveraux. TrueBond. Rift monitoring. Victor Ash’s hidden wards. The sealed family records.
“Helena, I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer me honestly.”
“I always answer you honestly.”
“You don’t. You answer me correctly. There’s a difference.”
Her expression flickers. “What do you want to know?”
“How did Mom die?”
The question lands in the room like a stone in still water. Helena goes very still.
“Silas—”
“How did she die? I can’t remember. I realized it two days ago. I’ve gone over it a thousand times in my head, and there’s nothing there. Just a blank space where the memory should be. And I know I used to know. I know someone told me, and I believed them, and now I can’t find the belief anymore.”
Helena stands. She walks to the window, her back to me, her arms crossed. Outside, Chicago sprawls in every direction—glass and steel and lake water glinting in the afternoon sun.
“She died in a road accident,” Helena says. “Car crash on Lake Shore Drive. Wet pavement, lost control, hit the barrier. You were at home with Dad when we got the call.”
“But that’s not what I remember, because I don’t remember anything. There’s a wall, Helena. A clean, smooth wall where a traumatic memory should be. And I’ve been doing this job long enough to know that walls like that don’t build themselves.”
She doesn’t turn around.
“Helena. I need you to listen to me. Not as my boss. Not as our father’s protege. As my sister. Just my sister. Can you do that?”
Her shoulders tense. When she speaks, her voice is different—smaller, stripped of the Council polish.
“I was fifteen. You were ten. Mom had been sick for a while—we both knew that, even if no one said it out loud. But she was getting better. The treatments were working. And then one night she didn’t come home, and Dad told us there’d been an accident.”
“And you believed him.”
“I had no reason not to. Dad was grieving. We all were. The funeral happened, the cards stopped coming, and we moved on. That’s what you do.”
“That’s what you do when the story makes sense. But something doesn’t make sense here, and I think you know it.”
She turns around. Her eyes are bright, but her jaw is set.
“You’re asking me to question our father. The man who raised us after Mom died. The man who got me this position, who trained you, who?—”
“The man who sent me to Willowbrook with a mission that doesn’t hold up under scrutiny. The man whose office sealed the Ash family records. The man who sat across from me at my commissioning and told me Omegas were too biologically unstable to serve on the Council.”
Helena flinches. Actually flinches, like I’ve struck her.
