Chapter 40 A Pawn

Chapter 40 A Pawn
Jacob didn’t respond right away.
It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room, leaving only a hollow ringing in his ears. His grip loosened in his hair, fingers trembling as they fell slowly to his sides. The words Silas had just spoken didn’t land like information—they landed like a collapse.
Pregnant.

Mikael’s child.

A pawn.

Lyara, once again, trapped inside someone else’s war.
“No…” Jacob’s voice cracked, barely audible. He shook his head once, then again, like he could physically dislodge the truth from his mind. “No, you’re lying. You’re just—you're trying to break me again.”

Silas didn’t move. “I don’t need to break you. You’re already broken. I’m just redirecting what’s left of you.”
Jacob let out a rough, uneven breath. His knees threatened to give out, and he pressed his back harder against the wall as if it could hold him upright. His mind scrambled through fragments—Lyara smiling in the flower shop, Lyara arguing with Mikael, Lyara crying in that dimly lit room after everything collapsed.
And now this.

“She wouldn’t let them take her,” Jacob muttered, more to himself than to Silas. “Lyara doesn’t just… disappear. She fights.”

“She did fight,” Silas replied calmly. “That’s why he’s still alive.”

A silence followed. Heavy. Pressurized. Like the entire facility itself was listening.

Then Jacob looked up again, his eyes sharpening slightly despite the haze of drugs. “If Eleanor has her… why tell me? Why bring me here?”

Silas studied him for a moment, as if weighing whether Jacob was finally ready to hear the truth beneath the truth.

“Because Eleanor Roosevelt doesn’t just collect assets,” he said. “She shapes outcomes. And right now, you’re part of the outcome.”

Jacob let out a bitter laugh, but it broke halfway. “I’m a prisoner in a white box. What outcome am I supposed to shape?”

Silas stepped closer, lowering his voice. “A controlled one.”

From the corridor outside, a faint mechanical hum shifted—security systems recalibrating. The facility wasn’t just holding Jacob. It was measuring him. Watching him.

Silas continued, “Eleanor is preparing to erase Lyara’s identity. Once the baby is born, Lyara becomes irrelevant. Legally unstable. Emotionally compromised. She’ll be reclassified, relocated… or quietly removed from the record entirely.”

Jacob’s fists clenched again. This time, not in panic—but in anger.

“You’re talking like she’s a document.”

“In Eleanor’s world?” Silas said quietly. “That’s exactly what she is.”

For a long moment, Jacob said nothing. His breathing steadied, but not in calm—more like containment. Like something dangerous had stopped spilling out and started collecting inside instead.

Finally, he asked, “What do you want from me?”

That was the shift Silas had been waiting for.

Not denial.

Not collapse.

A question.

Silas straightened slightly. “Mikael is unstable. The public believes he’s detained, but that won’t hold. His influence still exists behind closed doors. Eleanor knows this. She also knows Mikael will burn everything down to find Lyara.”

“And?”

“And he needs a counterweight,” Silas said. “Someone who understands Lyara without being blinded by emotion. Someone she trusts—or used to trust.”

Jacob let out a harsh breath. “You think she trusts me?”

“I think you’re the closest thing she has to a stable memory,” Silas corrected. “And memories are leverage.”
Jacob’s gaze dropped to the floor. His reflection was faint in the polished concrete, distorted and ghostlike.

“So what is this? You’re recruiting me now?”
Silas didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he reached into his coat and retrieved a small black device—flat, unmarked, no larger than a card. He placed it on the plastic table between them.

“This is your way out,” he said.

Jacob didn’t touch it. “That’s never how it works.”

“No,” Silas agreed. “But it’s how it starts.”

A soft click echoed from the ceiling. Cameras adjusting focus.

Silas continued, “Eleanor’s location network is layered. Coastal blind zones. Signal suppression corridors. Private medical access points. It’s a moving cage. But not an unbreakable one.”

Jacob finally looked at the device. “And you have access to this?”

“I have fragments,” Silas said. “Enough to start building a path. Not enough to finish it alone.”

Jacob’s voice lowered. “So I’m not a prisoner anymore. I’m a tool.”

Silas met his gaze directly. “You’ve always been a tool. The only question is who’s holding you.”

The words stung—but they also clarified something in Jacob’s expression. The panic didn’t vanish, but it reorganized itself. Anger replaced helplessness. Focus replaced shock.

“And Mikael?” Jacob asked. “Where does he fit into this?”

Silas exhaled slowly, as if choosing his next words carefully.

“Mikael is no longer in control of the situation,” he said. “He’s being monitored. Possibly manipulated. If Eleanor convinces him that Lyara is beyond saving, he’ll destroy himself trying to confirm it.”

Jacob shook his head slightly. “He wouldn’t give up on her.”

“That’s what makes him dangerous,” Silas replied. “Men who don’t let go eventually break everything around them.”

A distant alarm pulsed once in the facility—soft, controlled, more like a heartbeat than a warning. Then silence again.

Silas stepped back toward the door.

“You have twenty minutes,” he said. “After that, your sedation cycle resumes. You’ll forget most of this conversation by morning if you’re still here.”
Jacob’s eyes snapped up. “Wait.”

Silas paused.

“If I do this,” Jacob said slowly, “if I help you… I want her safe. Not just found. Safe.”

For the first time, something flickered in Silas’s expression. Not sympathy. Not kindness. Something closer to recognition.

“No one in this story is safe,” he said quietly. “But we
can decide who gets to suffer first.”

The door began to open behind him.

Jacob stepped forward abruptly. “If she’s pregnant—if that’s true—then she’s not just a hostage anymore.

She’s—”

“An anchor,” Silas finished. “Yes.”

Silas turned slightly, half in the doorway now. “And anchors sink entire systems when they move.”
A final glance between them. Then Silas added, almost as an afterthought:

“Decide quickly, Jacob. Eleanor doesn’t keep variables alive for long.”

The door sealed shut.

And Jacob was left alone again in the sterile cube, staring at the small black device on the table.
For a long time, he didn’t move.

Then, slowly, he reached for it.