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I pushed into the house, the overwhelming scent of my prepubescent years filling my lungs. Cigar smoke, hot cast iron, and coffee. All of it cut with the smell that was uniquely Diesel’s. It clung to the place.
I remembered when I first entered this house, an angry, scared boy with no place left in the world to go. It smelled like a mother then. The lingering scent of Dies’ late wife had brought me comfort those first few weeks, before it inevitably began to fade. It reminded me of my own mother.
“In here,” came Diesel’s deep baritone from the living room down the hall to the right. I kicked off my shoes before going in, trying to cling to a singular racing thought so I could figure out how I wanted to handle this. But the truth of it was, I had no fucking idea what was about to come out of my mouth.
Diesel lifted his head from the laptop screen he was scowling at on the coffee table. His elbows on his knees, hands clasped tight.
He turned the screen to face me without a word.
On it was a webpage that read in massive white font on a black background The Bone Man. Below was the comparative images of mine and my alter-ego’s faces, showing all the marker matches that confirmed our identities were one and the same. How this fucker had access to that sort of software was beyond me. But it wasn’t the worst of the evidence. The signed NDA was what really made it undeniable. I was just glad I always signed as Corvus James, excluding my true surname.
A prickle of unease festered in my gut as I racked my brain trying to remember if that name was anywhere on that document. I remembered Maxine saying it wouldn’t be binding without my full name, but had I used it? Had I given her…
“Is this accurate?” Diesel asked, and I pulled myself back to the here and now, forcing myself to stand straighter. “Your face is all over the internet, son. They were talking about you on The Edge this morning.”
Fuck.
Of course he found out through the fucking radio. He always had that station playing.
“It’s true,” I confirmed, and Diesel’s eyes glimmered with malice as he stared at me from his seat on the couch, jerking his gaze away as he stood, showing me his back. Just long enough for him to get control back.
He popped his knuckles, lifting his head to stare out the window, past the roses, onto the quiet street outside. “You kept this from me…”
“I did.”
“For how long?”
“I signed with my manager a little over two years ago,” I found myself saying. There was no point in lying about any of it. Not anymore. “But I’ve been uploading my music anonymously to different sites for longer.”
He took a shaky breath.
“You’ve always been so good at keeping your secrets, Son,” Dies trailed off. “You thought you were keeping your little humanitarian project from me too, but I’ve had Julia on my payroll longer than you have.”
My teeth clenched.
“You knew? This whole time?”
“Of course I fucking knew. This is my city. I know everything that happens here.”
…but I never had a show in Thorn Valley. And that was very purposeful. Which was why he never figured it out.
He turned back to face me, hard lines in his forehead. “But this? How could you keep this from me?”
A muscle in my jaw popped as I held back a thousand words I wouldn’t be able to take back if I spoke them aloud.
“You must know,” Diesel continued. “How stupid this is.”
Heat flooded my chest.
“This gives our enemies a time and place where you’re going to be. Show dates and times. Locations.”
“Which was why I hid my identity.”
“Oh? So it wasn’t just to keep it from me, then?”
Breathe.
“For all you know, Son, it was our enemies who outed you.”
