HELENA POV
I had spent the last hour on the sofa with Silas, and by the time I finally stopped talking my throat felt raw and my head felt too heavy for my neck. Explaining three years of my children’s lives to the man who helped create them was… exhausting in ways I didn’t have words for. And terrifying. And unfair. And strangely relieving. All at the same time.
He had listened the way only Silas ever listened, quiet, focused, leaning forward slightly as if he needed every detail, as if he was memorizing every memory he had missed. It made my stomach twist, because he wasn’t faking that kind of attention. He never had. Not with me. With everyone else he’d always been the grumpy one—cold, distant, impossible to approach—but with me he’d pull back just enough to show cracks in the armor.
