I forced myself to meet his gaze. “I’m not here for comfort.”
A slow smile tugged at his mouth, but the warmth never reached his eyes. “No. You’re here for revenge. Sometimes those are the same thing.”
I pocketed the photos, ignoring the tremor in my hands. “Tell me how to find her.”
He shrugged almost lazily. “You can’t; she’s dead,” he said, then smirked. “Well, that’s what everyone believes.”
“What do you mean?”
Sinclair’s laughter was a low, dangerous thing. “Sometimes the truth comes at a price, my dear. Sometimes, when a door is opened, it can never close again. So be sure you want to go down this path, because this time, this path isn’t about you.”
I let the silence settle, heavy enough to suffocate hope. Sinclair waited, the only sound being the gentle clink of ice against glass.
I swallowed hard.
“So who is she?” My voice was smaller than I intended, threadbare with exhaustion.
Sinclair tapped a finger against his glass, considering the question as if tasting the word for poison. “A myth,” he said at last. “A whisper with just enough teeth to be real. You chase her, you’d better be ready to lose something. Maybe yourself.”
I slid the photos back out, splaying them on his desk like tarot cards. “If she’s alive, someone’s hiding her.”
A flicker of approval, gone as quickly as it surfaced. “Or she’s hiding herself. People have a talent for vanishing when the world turns cruel.”
“But you know more,” I pressed.
He set his glass down—a deliberate gesture, a signal. “I know where the trail turns cold. I know the last place she was seen alive. And I know you won’t walk away now.”
I leaned forward, adrenaline thrumming under my skin. “Then show me.”
Sinclair’s eyes glinted, sharp and unreadable. “Tomorrow. At dusk. LaGuardia, hanger one. Bring nothing you can’t afford to lose.”
His words hung between us, a contract inked in shadows and unfinished stories. I nodded, already feeling the ground shift beneath me—because the search for truth was never just a hunt. It was unraveling, and the thread was already slipping through my fingers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Valhalla
The flight from New York City to Las Vegas, Nevada, was quiet. Neither Sinclair nor I truly spoke. Then again, there wasn’t really much to say. The truth was a hard pill to swallow most times, and our truth was no different.
I didn’t know why he saved me that day at the Trick Pony, and I never really asked. Maybe it was because I was afraid of the answer. Maybe I really didn’t care, but the fact was, I owed him for that day, and I never repaid my debt. I knew that day was coming. As to when, I was sure he would let me know when the time was right for him. Until then, I would play along with whatever game he wanted to play.
However, there was one thing we did need to discuss, and there was no time like the present. “Why didn’t you tell me the baby I carried out of there that day was my son?”
“Would it have mattered?” he asked, never taking his eyes off the paper he was reading. “The second you were free, you abandoned him. You left Silas, Rowen, and myself to raise him.”
“I would have taken him with me.”
He looked at me then. “Would you have? Correct me if I’m wrong, Thena, but you were more concerned with your daughter to even consider you had a son.”
“My name is Meredith or Valhalla.”
He scoffed. “You will always be Thena to me, no matter what name you go by. Now stop deflecting and answer my question.”
“You know why I left, and it wasn’t my choice to leave my son. I had to find my daughter, and you knew that. I wouldnever have left him if I’d known who he was. As for my name, I am Meredith now, and that is the name I choose to go by. The past is the past.” I turned away, staring out of the plane window, watching the clouds drift by. “I made a promise to myself that I would find her, and I did. I couldn’t have done that if I had taken him with me. You knew how dangerous it was.”
Sinclair remained silent for a moment, and I could feel his eyes on me. “You could have come back for him. You could have at least stayed in contact. But you didn’t. You disappeared and left us to pick up the pieces. I had to step up and be a father to him, something I never planned on doing.”
“I saw the picture of Danika on your desk.”