Page 88 of Hades

Zeus leaned forward. “Lettie is what... twenty-four? Twenty-five?”

“That would be my guess.”

“That’s not enough,” Hades argued.

“I know.”

But it was something. It was more than I’d had in all the years of searching. More than the dead ends and false leads and women who looked like her but weren’t.

I ignored him and kept going. “She said something when I told her about Colette. I can’t get it out of my head.”

The room seemed to lean closer.

I hated this part. Hated saying it out loud because once I did, it would become real in a way I wasn’t ready for. Real in a way that meant I couldn’t take it back. Couldn’t pretend I was imagining things. Couldn’t convince myself I was projecting grief onto a woman who just happened to carry the wrong name and the right eyes.

“I told her my sister’s name was Colette.” My father’s hand tightened on my shoulder. Squeezed so hard that it hurt. “But that I called her Lettie.”

Hades’ brows drew together. I watched something shift in his expression. He was processing. Calculating. Trying to figure out if this was real or if I’d finally lost my fucking mind.

“She apologized,” I said quietly.

Zeus’ eyes narrowed. “For what?”

“For asking everyone to call her Lettie. She said it must be tearing me apart every time I heard it.” I waited for Hades to look at me. “It’s what my mother would have done,” I said. “It’s not just how she looks, it’s how she acts. Everything about her reminds me of my mother.”

Hades went still. The kind of stillness that meant he was processing something he didn’t want to process. Something that changed the shape of everything he thought he knew. Something that meant Lettie wasn’t just some woman he’d claimed. She was someone else’s. Someone who’d been stolen and lost and mourned for over two decades.

Dad’s voice came rough from behind me. “Ford started calling her Lettie when she was a baby.”

Every eye moved to him.

Dad kept his hand on my shoulder, his gaze distant. Fixed somewhere in the past. Somewhere none of us could follow. Somewhere he’d been living alone for too fucking long.

“There wasn’t any big reason for it. He was twelve and thought Colette sounded too formal for a baby. He started calling her Lettie.” His throat worked as he swallowed hard. “His mother loved it, so it stuck.”

My chest hurt.

Fuck, it hurt.

Like someone had reached inside and squeezed until everything cracked. Until my ribs splintered and my lungs collapsed and my heart stopped beating. I closed my eyes for a second. Not because I was breaking. Because I was trying like hell not to.

“I forgot about that,” I admitted.

The words tasted like failure. Like ash. Like I’d betrayed her all over again. Like losing her once wasn’t enough. I had to forget I gave her the name too. Had to forget the most important thing about her. The thing that made her mine before she was anyone else’s.

“I didn’t forget her,” I said quickly. Hating the crack in my voice. The one that made me sound like a kid instead of a man. Hated that after twenty-three years, I still couldn’t talk about her without falling apart. “I never forgot her. But I forgot... how much that nickname mattered. That I was the one who gave it to her.”

Dad’s hands were on me immediately. Both of them now. Heavy. Grounding. “Ford.”

“I’m fine.”

“You’re not.”

“No shit,” I snapped. Then softer, because he didn’t deserve my anger: “I’m fine.”

I wasn’t fine. Hadn’t been fine since the bullet tore through my back. Since the surgeon told me I might never walk again. Since I woke up in that hospital bed and realized I’d survived the war but lost the ability to stand on my own two feet. Lost the ability to chase after my sister if I ever found her. Lost everything that made me feel like a man instead of a burden.

But I was still here.