Page 415 of Eternal
He closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them again, they shine with something close to grief.
“She loved you. All of you. She would’ve given everything for her family.”
Loved me? Loved us?
How can a stranger be so sure of something he never had to survive?
How can he claim to understand?
Was he ever a child, watching his mother slowly destroy herself, helpless, powerless, with no way to stop it? My mom loved me once.
Before her love turned to bottles and pills, to things that made her forget how tofeel.
Things that made her forget how to look at me like I was her own child.
Like she was blind to the love I had for her.
I watched her lose her beauty to confusion and pain.
And he…he stands there like he knew her? Maybe he’s simply blinded by the version of her he wanted to see.
“You loved her?” I ask before I can stop myself.
He smiles, softly. “Probably. But she only had eyes for her husband, her kids... and justice.”
I step forward slowly, pull out a chair, and sit near his bed. “How did you meet her?”
“It was after a court case. My boss told me to keep tabs on her. She was asking too many questions, digging into sensitive files. They said she was a potential national threat.” He gives a short, bitter laugh. “But the moment I saw her, I knew that was bullshit. She was chasing the truth. Not chaos.”
He pauses, like he’s remembering an old life. “We spoke a lot. Sometimes for hours. She told me what she was discovering, little by little. About the organization, about the women she was trying to protect. She volunteered in shelters, you know. While working with the Bratva. Strange, right? But it made sense to her. She trusted me. And I decided to go in. Infiltrate. From the inside. For her.”
“You talk about her like she’s still here,” I whisper.
She’s not, she wasneverhere.
He coughs, a deep painful sound. Then slowly straightens up in the bed. “Before she died... she found something. Someone.”
I pull the journal out of my bag and hand it to him. “Do you recognize this?”
His hands tremble as he takes it. He frowns, inspecting the cover. “This...is this the real one?”
I shake my head. “I recognize her writing in a lot of pages, but I think they tampered with it. Some things are probably missing, and some rewritten.”
He nods slowly. “She had a name. She thought she’d found the man at the top of the network.”
“Do you know who it was?” I ask.
“No. I never got the chance. After she died, I vanished. I was sick. Changed my name. I wanted the world to forget me. But cancer doesn’t give a damn about secrets.”
“So, you can’t help me?”
He looks toward the window, as if searching for something outside. “Azra, there’s something I never told anyone.” He leans forward with effort, opens the drawer beside him, and pulls out a worn, yellowed envelope. He hands it to me. “She gave me this. An address. A private estate. Not too far from Vegas. Massive. Isolated. Dozens of outbuildings. Security is like a fortress.”
“Whose property is it?”
He stares into my eyes. “Edward Callahan.”
I go still. “The governor?”
