Chapter 258
Lance
I watched the transformation happen in real time.
One moment, Thomas sat slumped in his chair—the picture of a dying man clinging to dignity. The next, his phone buzzed. His eyes dropped to the screen. And everything changed.
The defeated sag of his shoulders straightened. The tremor in his hands stilled. Even his breathing shifted from shallow and labored to deep and controlled, like a man who'd been holding his breath underwater for years and had finally decided to surface.
Whatever message he'd received, it had flipped some internal switch. The grieving father vanished. In his place sat something harder. Colder. More dangerous.
I couldn't see the screen from where I sat, but the transformation was unmistakable. Only one person could produce this kind of effect—only Felix could pull his father back from the edge of surrender with a single message. Whatever the boy had written, it had worked. Thomas had stopped pretending to give up.
A strange melancholy settled over me as I watched him pocket the phone. All these years, I'd built my life around the belief that ruthlessness was strength. That emotion was weakness. That the only way to survive in this world was to cut yourself off from anything that could be used against you.
Thomas had lived by those same rules. And look where it had gotten us—two men sitting across from each other in an interrogation room, decades of poison between us, neither one capable of backing down even when backing down might save us both.
"Uncle." The word felt strange on my tongue after everything that had happened. "What do you say we end this tonight?"
Thomas's expression didn't flicker. When he spoke, his voice carried none of the wavering frailty he'd been affecting all evening.
"Thirty years." His tone was flat, final. "Yeah. Let's settle it." He paused, then added with studied casualness, "Restroom first, though."
I couldn't help myself. The opening was too perfect.
"What's the matter?" I leaned back in my chair, letting mockery creep into my tone. "Bladder giving out on you?"
I waited for him to play along. To clutch at his chest or mutter something about his medication. To give me one more piece of evidence that the frail-old-man routine had been real all along.
Instead, Thomas stood.
Not the slow, painful rise of an invalid. He simply stood—spine straight, shoulders back, every inch of his considerable height on display. The exhaustion that had clung to him like a second skin vanished as if it had never existed.
"No." His eyes met mine with perfect clarity. "Never was sick. I just need to piss."
The silence that followed felt like the moment before a car crash—that split second when you realize what's about to happen but can't do a damn thing to stop it.
"Lance." His voice cut through the stillness like a blade. "Get ready. Once we start digging into what happened thirty years ago, you're gonna wish we hadn't."
Then he walked out.
Not shuffled. Not hobbled. Walked—with the confident stride of a man who owned every room he entered, who'd spent a decade playing a role and had finally decided the performance was over.
I sat frozen for three full seconds before my brain caught up with what I'd just witnessed.
"His illness just—" Arthur's voice cracked, thin with shock. "Gone?"
Eleanor's response came soft and measured, but it carried an edge that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
"Mmm." She sounded almost thoughtful. "You know what's worse than a dangerous man? One who's done pretending he isn't."
Her gaze shifted to me, sharp with warning.
"Hope you're ready, Lance."
I forced a smile onto my face—the same confident expression I'd worn through a thousand hostile boardroom negotiations. But inside, something unfamiliar stirred. Something I hadn't felt in years, not since those early days when I'd been twenty-four and drowning and convinced I was about to lose everything.
Fear.
Not the rational concern you feel when assessing risk. The visceral kind. The kind that whispers you might be in over your head this time.
Pull it together, I told myself firmly. He's one man. He's cornered. You have the FBI, the truth, and Serena on your side. He has nothing but—
But what? What did Thomas have that could make him walk out of here like he'd already won?
I turned toward Serena, needing the anchor of her presence to steady myself. Before I could speak, Diana's voice cut through my thoughts.
"Well, well." She approached with that particular smile that meant she was enjoying herself far too much. "Gotta hand it to you, Lance. You give your girl an out, and she walks straight into a police station anyway."
Heat crept up the back of my neck. I reached for Serena's hand, threading our fingers together in what I hoped looked like casual affection rather than desperate grounding.
"Yeah." I kept my voice careful. "I'm glad she did. Not sure I could've held the line against Thomas without her here."
Serena's eyes widened slightly. "Wait, this is—?"
"Diana Reeves. FBI." I said it quickly, perhaps too quickly. "She's the one who arrested Calloway. Took over the whole investigation. And right now? She's our best shot at finding out what really happened to my mother. She's got access to files no one else can touch."
I watched Serena's expression shift from curiosity to something like awe. Then, to my complete horror, she pulled her hand from mine and rushed toward Diana.
"God, thank you." Serena grasped Diana's hands, her voice fervent. "We're counting on you, Agent Reeves. All of it—clearing Lance's name, finding the truth about his mother. Everything."