Page 69

Rurik grinned and settled more comfortably against the booth. “Heard you were looking for me. Thought I’d tag along.” His gaze stayed on Rowen, but I felt the controlled alertness beneath his casual posture. “So why am I here?”

“I expected to speak with Madigan alone.”

“Well, you have me too. So speak.”

Rowen leaned forward, lowering his voice even though no one sat close enough to overhear. “I’m looking for information about my birth parents.”

Every muscle in my body tightened.

The request sounded simple only because he didn’t know what stood behind it. Rowen was not asking about Nicoletta’s pregnancy, Valentino’s refusal, or Brian’s decision to let his son disappear beneath another name. He was not asking how many men had protected the lie, what leverage the Society had gained from it, or whether Salvatore had died with Rowen’s name among the people he hoped to save.

He was asking for his parents.

For one disloyal second, I wanted to give them to him.

The genealogy had changed the way I saw him. Rowen’s face had once belonged only to Rowen. Now, against my will, I searched it for traces of Nicoletta and Brian. I hated the file for doing that to him. Blood might explain where a person began, but it should not overwrite everything he had become. The Society reduced lives to lines between names, then waited for families to value those lines more than the people trapped inside them.

I imagined telling him quietly, almost gently, and watching uncertainty loosen from his face. He deserved to know that Nicoletta had carried him before Giovanni, that he had not come from nothing, and that the absence in his history had been created by other people’s fear rather than any lack in him. Maybe the truth would heal something. Maybe Rowen would hear it and choose caution.

Then I remembered the files spread across the safe-house table: children hidden beneath false surnames, families connected without their knowledge, and truths preserved until they could become weapons. Rowen’s pain couldn’t be separated from what he might do to end it.

Rurik drew a slow breath beside me. “Why not ask Sinclair? I’m sure he already knows.”

“You know Sinclair,” Rowen whispered, glancing around the bar. “He doesn’t give information away without a price.”

“So why come to me?” Rurik asked.

“Because you’re good at what you do, and Sypher is busy.” A brief grin tugged at Rowen’s mouth before he turned to me. “Illyria also gave me Madigan’s name. She seems to think Maddie might be able to help, which struck me as odd. Then I remembered Sinclair once offered you help with a particularly delicate situation, and it got me thinking.”

Illyria had given him my name because she understood that mothers sometimes lived inside impossible choices. She might not have known what truth I carried, but she knew I had surrendered Henry to keep him alive and survived each day afterward without calling the sacrifice noble. Maybe she believed that made me capable of helping Rowen.

It made me capable of understanding why I couldn’t.

I closed my eyes and saw Henry asleep beneath Salvatore’s hand. I saw him in Central Park calling another woman Mom, safe enough to wound me without ever knowing he had done it. Everything I had done had been for that safety. I would not gamble it away because refusing Rowen made me feel cruel.

“I won’t put my son in harm’s way, Rowen. Not even for you.”

“I’m not asking you to put him in danger,” Rowen said, softening his voice. “I know you, Maddie. I watched you grow up. You and Dante were best friends once—still are, I think. I’m only asking who my parents are.”

Only.

The word carried an entire war he couldn’t see.

If Rowen confronted the people named in Sinclair’s genealogy, questions would follow. Questions would demand proof. Proof would lead to Salvatore’s investigation, and Salvatore’s files led to me, Henry, Haizley, Layla, Jessica, Jackson, and every stolen lineage the Society had cataloged. Telling Rowen risked exposing children and adults who had no idea their lives rested on secrets capable of destroying criminal empires.

Rowen believed he was offering me a marker in exchange for a name. He didn’t understand that no favor he granted could return the dead, protect Henry, or contain what might happen once the truth left my mouth.

“Your marker means nothing to me, Rowen. It’s what comes after that worries me.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

I opened my eyes. Rowen’s frustration was real, but beneath it waited the ache of a child who had grown into a man without outgrowing the need to know why he had been left behind. For one dangerous moment, Nicoletta’s name pressed against my teeth. I swallowed it hard enough to hurt.

“It means digging into the past always has consequences. My father almost died when his past came back for him. Sometimes the truth is not what you hope it will be, and it rarely leaves anything unchanged.” I met his eyes. “Like Illyria, I will do anything to protect my legacy.”

Legacy sounded cold, like inheritance, territory, or power.

I meant Henry. I meant the boy whose fingers had once curled around mine while Salvatore promised our love would follow him even after I no longer could. I meant every child in those files whose life could be shattered because someone else needed an answer. I meant the mothers who had hidden them from violent men and the fathers who might never have known they existed. My legacy was not power. It was the innocent life continuing after Salvatore and me, and I would let Rowen hate me before allowing Henry to become collateral damage in someone else’s search for identity.