Page 153 of Crave
And that’s when everything changed.
Chapter Thirty-Five
SILAS
I didn’t wantto be here.
I told myself I wouldn’t step foot in this room again, that I’d let the dust settle, let the ghosts have it. But now standing in the doorway, I knew the ghosts had never left.
They were waiting.
They were waiting for me.
The study still smelled the same. Leather and whiskey. Smoke clinging to the walls like a lingering threat. It was untouched, frozen in time—apart from the gaps in the book shelves where there were once blood-splattered books and the Persian rug stained with their blood that was now a pile of ash.
The last time I’d seen my father alive, it was in this room. Behind that desk. A glass in his hand, brows furrowed in focus. Unbreakable. Untouchable.
And then he wasn’t.
I couldn’t help but glance down. The blood had been scrubbed from the floor, but still I saw it. The splatter from where my mom had stood, begging…pleading.
Bile rose in the back of my throat.
And now I knew she’d been here.
Our lying goddamn sister.
Angelica.
My fingers curled into fists. My lungs burned, my breath caught between rage and disbelief. She’d stood in this goddamn room. She’d been here when they died, watching it as it happened.
My stomach twisted, a sickness curling deep in my gut. How much did she see exactly? And why the fuck didn’t she fight whoever did this?
I exhaled sharply, forcing the memory down. I wasn’t here for the past. I was here for the truth. But as I stepped deeper into the room, the weight of everything pressed in.
Maybe I wasn’t ready for the truth after all?
I should’ve never stepped into this room.
I knew it the second I crossed the threshold. The second the door clicked shut behind me, sealing me into the past.
But I wasn’t a kid anymore.
I wasn’t thirteen, standing in this same fucking room, asking the wrong goddamn question like the naive fool I’d been.
Las Almas Perdidas.
The memory hit me like gunshot to the chest—sharp, sudden, inescapable.
I’d only said the words once.
Standing right here, just a kid who didn’t know better. My father was at his desk, reviewing something in one of his ledgers, and I—like the arrogant little shit I was—had spoken without thinking.
“What does Las Almas Perdidas mean?”
The shift was instant.
One second, he was flipping through pages. The next, he’d gone completely still. The kind of stillness that made my stomach drop, that made my instincts scream at me to take it back.
