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He looked at me with wide eyes. “You remember?”

I nodded. “I thought Jackie would have told you. It’s been a couple of weeks now, but I remember now. Remember it all.”

He smiled sadly. “A blessing and a curse, ain’t it?”

I nodded. “Isn’t it.” I corrected with a wink, and he blushed slightly, but seemed grateful. “So why are we hiding in here?”

He shrugged. “It feels safer in here,” he mumbled and closed his book, but held it tightly. “He’s still out there. Father.”

“I know,” I mumbled. It was the truth. I had a feeling Silas was in the same boat I was: forever terrified that this new normal we were digging out of the burnt ashes of what our lives could have been would be ripped away in an instant. “Why do you call him that? Father? You never explained.”

Silas shifted uncomfortably, and I half-expected him to sidestep the question, but he answered anyway. “After a couple of years of me asking him random questions, he finally answered one: what to call him. I don’t think he really thought about it, just gave me some sort of answer to shut me up.”

“Did you ask him a lot of questions?”

He nodded. “I was usually alone; the others never lasted long. Those two days he was there were the only days I could talk to someone. I was desperate and would ask him anything I could think of. It annoyed him,” Silas laughed humorlessly, “but what did he expect? I was a kid with nothing. Of course I was desperate for any human interaction.”

I was impressed with Silas and the leaps and bounds he had made intellectually since we had escaped. Listening to him now, it was obvious he was taking his tutoring lessons seriously. Silas was going to thrive—I knew it—and I would be damned if this monster who had tried to break us took anything else from him.

“They’re looking for him, you know? And where we were kept. Where you lived.”

“They won’t find him,” he mumbled. “I looked up my case. They never even got close to finding me. The only reason I’m not down there anymore is because he took you.”

“But they never stopped looking,” I argued.

He shrugged. “Doesn’t change the facts. I would have died down there if it hadn’t been for you. Father’s only mistake was taking you.”

I didn’t argue with him; I couldn’t. So many parts of this case weren’t uncovered until Lexington and I got our hands on it. I knew Detective Ransom meant well, but he was understaffed and underfunded.

“Maybe you and I can try and figure out who he was,” I reasoned.

Silas looked at me, perplexed. “I never saw him. Neither did you.”

“True, but it doesn’t change the fact that we know more about him than anyone else. You in particular. Even if we can’t figure out his name, we can at least work together to share everything we do know about that place and what happened to everyone who didn’t get out.”

“The lucky ones,” Silas grumbled.

I raised a curious brow. “You think they’re lucky?”

“You and I have to live with scars. They don’t.” His jaw was set in a way only a determined sixteen-year-old's could be. It was easy to forget he was just a boy raised in a very dark world.

I nodded. “Scars fade with time.”

Silas didn’t have an argument, but instead slumped against one of the shelves, stretching his legs out next to mine. Somehow he had managed to grow even taller in the months since I'd seen him. “I missed you, Goldie. Why… why didn’t you come see me? Why wait until now?”

I leaned back against the shelf with him. “I wasn’t ready. I didn’t see much of anyone until recently. There was a lot to process, a lot to understand.”

“Were you mad at me?” he asked timidly, his gaze downcast.

“Why in the world would I have been mad at you?”

“I couldn’t protect you from him. He hurt you because I failed you,” he mumbled.

I scooted closer to Silas, gently taking his hand in mine. “You are the only reason I survived those months down there. The only person to blame for what happened to us is the man who took us. He is responsible for what happened to us, for what happened to everyone who was hurt.”

“I remember all of them. Every person he brought down there after me, I remember them. Their names, what happened to them, how long they were there…” He trailed off, his gaze unfocusing as the memories hit him like a wave. “I remember how they died.”

My heart hurt, knowing just how much pain he held within him. “Do you want to talk about them?”