The ferry hummed beneath my boots, a deep, rhythmic vibration that felt like a localized earthquake. I kept my head down, the hood of my yellow raincoat pulled low. My heart was a frantic bird trapped in my ribs.
Ten minutes to docking, the intercom crackled.
I pulled the burner phone from my pocket. The screen was cracked, a spiderweb of glass obscuring the message from my mysterious contact.
[Unknown]: They're on the boat. Do not go to the main gate. Use the service entrance behind the infirmary.
I looked at the black SUV in my peripheral vision. The windows were tinted dark enough to hide a soul. I didn't recognize the vehicle, but I recognized the energy. It was corporate. It was calculated. It smelled like Sterling money.
"Leo," I whispered, the name a prayer against the wind. "Just hold on."
As the ferry bumped against the wooden pilings of the dock, I didn't wait for the cars to offload. I slipped through the pedestrian exit, blending into a group of hikers with oversized backpacks. I stepped onto the damp pavement of the island, the scent of pine and salt thick in the air.
Saint Jude's Academy wasn't a school; it was a fortress disguised as a monastery. Sitting atop a jagged cliff, its grey stone walls looked like they had grown straight out of the earth. There were no playgrounds here. No sounds of children laughing. Just the oppressive silence of a place designed to keep the world out—and the secrets in.
I hiked the perimeter trail, my lungs burning. The service entrance was a rusted iron gate tucked between two overgrown Douglas firs. I pulled the heavy key I'd stolen from Dr. Aris's office—a "souvenir" from the Sterling medical archives—and prayed the tumblers hadn't been changed.
Click.
I slipped inside.
The infirmary smelled of bleach and old wax. I moved like a shadow through the corridors, my ears ringing with the sound of my own pulse. According to the archives, Leo Gable—registered here as "Patient 402"—was kept in the East Wing. The "special" wing.
I turned a corner and stopped dead.
At the end of the hall, through a reinforced glass window, was a boy. He was taller than I remembered, his shoulders broader, but he had my mother's chin and that same stubborn set to his brow. He was sitting at a desk, methodically taking apart a mechanical watch.
"Leo," I breathed, my hand hitting the glass.
He didn't hear me. He was focused, his fingers moving with a precision that was terrifying for a fourteen-year-old. He looked safe. He looked healthy. And he looked utterly alone.
"Maya?"
The voice didn't come from the room. It came from behind me.
I spun around, my back hitting the cold glass.
I expected Eleanor. I expected a security guard with a taser. I even expected the "Unknown" contact to finally show their face.
I didn't expect Reid.
He was standing ten feet away, his coat open, his hands shoved deep into his pockets. He looked like he'd been carved out of the very stone of the island. The "Ice King" didn't look angry. He looked hollow.
"Reid," I gasped, my voice failing me. "How... how did you..."
"You're an architect, Maya," he said, his voice a low, dangerous velvet. "But I'm the one who owns the land. Did you really think you could dig through the Sterling archives without me seeing the ghosts you were waking up?"
He stepped closer, the fluorescent lights of the hallway making his eyes look like silver coins.
"I spent six months hating you," he whispered. "I spent every night replaying that scene in the diner, trying to find the lie. I told myself you were a gold-digger. I told myself you were just another project that failed."
"Reid, you have to leave," I said, glancing back at Leo. "If Eleanor finds out you're here—"
"My mother is in a board meeting in London trying to explain why forty percent of her liquid assets have vanished," Reid intercepted, his lip curling in a cruel ghost of a smile. "She's a little busy right now."
He looked past me, his gaze landing on Leo. He froze.
I watched the realization hit him. He looked at the boy, then at me, then back at the boy. He saw the resemblance. He saw the "Medical Trust" for what it really was: a ransom.
"He's not mine," Reid said, his voice trembling for the first time. "He's... he's Arthur's."
"He's my brother," I said, the truth finally spilling out like blood from a wound. "Your father's 'backup family.' I signed that contract to keep him alive, Reid. I told you those things so your mother wouldn't burn the diner to the ground with you inside it."
The silence in the hallway was deafening.
Reid took a step toward me, his hand reaching out, then stopping, as if he were afraid I'd vanish if he touched me. The "Ice King" was cracking. The frozen mask was melting, revealing the man who had flipped pancakes in a silk apron, the man who had loved a waitress from Queens.
"You traded your life for his," Reid said, the words hitting him like a physical blow. "You let me hate you... to save him."
"I had to," I sobbed, the six months of loneliness finally breaking me. "I had to pay the debt, Reid. I didn't have five million dollars. I only had my heart."
Reid didn't say anything. He closed the distance between us in a single stride, his arms wrapping around me with a desperate, crushing force. He buried his face in my neck, and I felt the heat of his breath, the solid reality of him.
"The debt is cancelled, Maya," he rasped into my skin. "The firm, the money, the legacy... it's all gone. I burned it down to find you."
I pulled back, looking into his eyes. "What do you mean, burned it down?"
Reid looked at the door to Leo's room, then back at me. A cold, sharp light returned to his gaze—not the cold of a villain, but the cold of a protector.
"I didn't come here just to find you," he said. "I came here to take what belongs to us. We're leaving, Maya. You, me, and the boy."
"And your mother?"
Reid reached into his pocket and pulled out a digital tablet. It showed a live feed of the Sterling Foundation's main server. A countdown clock was ticking.
"In five minutes, every secret Arthur Sterling ever buried—every bribe, every illegal trust, every 'disappeared' child—goes to the Department of Justice. My mother wanted a legacy built on architecture. I'm giving her one built on a prison cell."
He grabbed my hand, his grip like iron.
"But we have to move. Now."
Across the hallway, the alarm began to blare.