JANE. HOME (EARLY EVENING)
The front door sighed shut. Fried onions, something baking, and a faint eucalyptus drifted through the house. Home.
She dropped her bag on the hall table, kicked off her shoes and felt the relief in her feet. Work since the conference had been a blur. Meetings, questions, no room to breathe. Maybe that was the point.
She was halfway to the kitchen when a laugh stopped her. Not polite. A bright, careless giggle. She followed the sound.
Her mother sat curled on the couch in a peach robe, phone to her ear, smiling like someone with a secret crush. Jane hadn't heard that laugh in years.
She turned into the kitchen, her stomach growled as she lifted the pot lid. The aroma of pottage yam greeting her, steam rising warm and calming. She ladled a plate, added slices of grilled meat from a foil tray, poured water into a glass. Simple comfort. Not just filling, anchoring.
When she returned, Fallon had ended the call but was still smiling. Jane dropped onto the couch opposite her. "Okay… who was that? You sound like you're sixteen."
Fallon reached for a tin on the coffee table and lifted the lid to reveal warm, golden cookies. "Nurse Tilda. She stopped by."
Jane straightened, curious. "Tilda? From the care center?"
She nodded, offering a cookie. "She said someone sent her. Said Mr. Davis asked her to check on me. Left these."
Jane blinked, forcing a smile. Jace? He hadn't called. Not once. But he'd sent cookies and a nurse? She glanced at her phone. Blank. No messages. No missed calls. Five days of silence.
"That was kind," she said, but the words felt thin.
"Mmhmm. These were still warm when she brought them." Fallon said, nibbling a cookie. Delighted.
"Yeah," Jane said, lifting one of the cookie to her nose, then set it back untouched. Her phone felt heavy on the table; she flipped it face-down. Her appetite evaporated. She thought they'd had a moment. Maybe she'd only imagined it.
"Mom, can I ask you something?" she asked setting her plate down.
"Of course, baby."
Jane took a breath. The cozy silence in the room made the question heavier. But she couldn't keep avoiding it, not after Jace had brought it up during their dinner in Geneva.
"Did my dad ever try to reach out before he… disappeared?"
Fallon's smile dimmed. "We've talked about this."
"I know. But I'm not a child anymore, I can handle the truth. Not the story you gave me at ten about him being a superhero on a mission."
Fallon looked at the tin, her fingers tightening around the edge. "He was complicated. Charming, ambitious. Dangerous, sometimes. He made choices that hurt people."
"Did he ever hurt you?" Jane asked.
"No," Fallon said quickly. "Not like that. But being with him was like standing too close to a fire. Eventually you'd get burned."
Jane leaned forward. "What kind of things was he involved in?"
Fallon's gaze drifted to the window, as if the answer might be waiting out there. "He worked with dangerous people whom I never trusted. Powerful people who don't like being questioned."
"Like Raymond Carrington?"
Fallon hands trembled and Jane caught it. "You knew him well, didn't you?"
"Too well. And not well enough," she murmured, then got up suddenly, gathering the empty cups. A little too fast but Jane wasn't letting it go.
"I spoke to him," Jane said. "At the conference, he knew things about you. About me. It wasn't coincidence."
Fallon's voice broke. "Jane, your father's not clean. When things turned, he vanished. No goodbye, no warning. I lied to you to keep you safe." Tears blurred her words. "I told you he was gone."
"You told me he died."
"I told you what I needed to say to keep you safe. I was scared. Alone. And you were so little. I didn't want you growing up in his shadow."
Jane stood. "That shadow never left. It's reaching back now."
"Please, Jane," Fallon whispered. "Promise me you'll leave this alone."
Jane looked at her mother's face. The fear, the longing for normalcy, and felt something shift. She couldn't promise.
"I can't," she said. "Not anymore."
A trail of half-truths, Jace's odd kindness, and now Carrington's name—everything clicked into a dangerous shape. She reached for her phone. She had questions. She had a direction. And she was done waiting.
Thea. Carrington Estate. Late Evening.
Thea padded into her room without switching on the lights. The sunset poured gold across the curtains; she wanted nothing but silence and a few stolen minutes. Work had been exhausting ever since her boss returned from the conference.
Her heels had come off the second she entered the estate. She tossed her bag on the chair, pulled her hair from its bun, and sank into the couch with a tired sigh. She closed her eyes.
Then her laptop pinged. Not her phone. Her private laptop, the one she used for sensitive stuff. Her pulse jumped.
Her eyes snapped open. She got up slowly, walked over, and tapped it open.
A single notification blinked in the corner:
Encrypted File Received
Sender: A.M.
Message: "Check this. Call me in a minute.
A.M. The investigator she'd hired to dig into the missing identity. She hadn't heard from him in weeks.
She clicked the file and a clean spreadsheet opened. Headers, columns, dates. This was a bank statement. One row snagged her eye:
Moncarrington Account – Monthly Statement
Recipient: F.H.
Bank: Lacrine Trust Offshore, Cayman Islands
Amount: $150,000.00
Frequency: Monthly
Two small letters. They shouldn't mean anything, yet her pulse snagged on them. F.H. The initials hummed with a familiarity she couldn't place, like a half-heard melody that wouldn't stop echoing. She leaned closer, scrolling back up, then down again, as if repetition might unlock the meaning. The trail didn't go back to a few months or even years. It went back twenty-four years.
Her breath stopped. Twenty-four years. The first payment date blinked back from before she could remember, before Carrington Biotech rose to empire. Her father's personal account? a thing that didn't exist in the family ledger was sending a fixed amount every month to someone with no public identity.
No invoice. No contract. No name. Just initials: F.H.
A voice memo from the investigator played: "Private recipient. Alias likely. Trails vanish at the first node. This looks personal."
Personal.
Thea leaned back, the room tilting. Her father had been quietly wiring a fortune to someone, month after month, for decades. No public record. No explanation.
She scrolled the ledger again, tracing the line back to that first payment, twenty-four years ago. Her thumb trembled.
She closed the laptop and let the silence gather. Thea's life; neat paychecks, rehearsed smiles, the safety net of wealth — suddenly felt threaded with other people's secrets.
She didn't reach for sleep, or wine, or comfort. She reached for her phone.
"Pick up," she whispered, pulse racing. "Before I lose my nerve."