Chapter 2 - The Call
Six months after Eleanor arrived, my anger reached a boiling point. I was pushing her away harder than the others, terrified of the grip she was getting on my heart. If I loved her, I would lose her. That was the only math the universe had ever taught me.
I was at an underground warehouse in the docklands, a place where blood stained the concrete and bets were placed in crumpled hundred-dollar bills. I was fighting a man twice my size, letting the physical pain drown out the psychological agony in my head. But then, one of the men in the crowd—a foot soldier for a rival syndicate—shouted something about my mother. He called her a weak, pathetic woman who deserved the fiery grave she got.
I didn’t just fight him. I nearly killed him.
It took three bouncers and two cops to pull me off his shattered body.
At seventeen, my family name could erase almost any mistake before it reached the outside world. But that afternoon, sitting inside a cold, fluorescent-lit police station with dried blood caked on my face, a split lip, and a suspension hanging over my head, the reality of my hollow existence crashed down on me. I was a monster, just like my father. I was destined for a cage.
The arresting officer, a weary man with bags under his eyes, slammed a heavy plastic phone on the metal table in front of me.
“You get one call, Cavanaugh,” the officer grunted, dripping with disdain. “Who do we call? Your billionaire father? Julian’s fancy lawyers?”
I stared at the black receiver. I pictured my father’s face—cold, calculating, disappointed not that I had nearly killed a man, but that I had gotten caught doing it. I pictured the soulless attorneys who would sweep in, toss a check, and drive me back to a mansion where I would be left alone in the dark.
My hand trembled as I reached for the phone. I didn’t choose my billionaire father, Julian Cavanaugh, or any of his powerful lawyers. I looked down at the list of memorized numbers in my head.
I quietly said, “Eleanor Hargrove.”
The officer glanced at the paperwork, his thick brow furrowing. “Your mother?”
“No.”
“Your guardian?”
I touched the stinging, deep cut on my lip, wincing at the metallic taste of blood, and shook my head. “No. Just call her.”
It was the ultimate surrender. I was giving up my armor.
Forty minutes later, the heavy metal door of the precinct buzzed open. I expected her to look angry. I expected her to look embarrassed. But when Eleanor walked in, still wearing her faded trench coat, her hair slightly damp from the evening rain, she didn’t look at the cops. She didn’t look at the rival gang members bleeding in the corner.
She only looked at me.
She walked straight past the front desk, ignoring the officer shouting at her to stop, and knelt in front of the metal bench where I was handcuffed to the rail. She reached out, her small, warm fingers gently tilting my chin up so she could inspect my bruised, swollen face.
“Does it hurt, Silas?” she asked softly.
I swallowed hard, my throat burning. “Yes.”
“Okay,” she whispered, her thumb brushing a tear I didn’t know I had shed. “Let’s go home.”
She didn’t have my father’s billions, but she had a terrifying, quiet authority. She signed the release papers, spoke to the shift sergeant in a low voice, and within ten minutes, she was walking me out into the cool night air.
We sat in her beat-up Honda Civic. The heater rattled. The smell of vanilla and old paper filled the cabin. She didn’t lecture me. She didn’t ask what the other guy looked like. When we pulled into the massive wrought-iron gates of Fairhaven, she bypassed the grand entrance, taking me through the kitchen door.
She sat me on the edge of the bathtub in the downstairs powder room. The only sound was the running water. She took a warm washcloth and began to dab away the dried blood from my forehead, my cheeks, my split lip.
I looked up at her. She was so close I could see the faint exhaustion pulling at the corners of her eyes. She always looked a little tired lately. She always seemed to press a hand to her chest when she thought no one was looking, catching her breath on the grand staircase.
“Why did you come?” I rasped, my voice breaking. “I’m a monster, Eleanor. I’m just like my father. I destroy things.”
Eleanor stopped wiping my face. She looked at me, her hazel eyes bottomless and sad. She reached up, cupping both sides of my face, forcing me to look at her.
“You are not a monster, Silas,” she said fiercely, her voice vibrating with a conviction that shattered my ribs. “You are a boy in pain. And pain makes us do desperate things. But you have a beautiful, fiercely protective heart. Do not let your father’s darkness convince you that you don’t belong in the light.”
A choked sob ripped out of my throat. The dam broke. I leaned forward, burying my face in her shoulder, and I wept. I cried for my mother. I cried for my brothers. I cried for the terrifying weight of my own existence. And Eleanor just held me, rocking a seventeen-year-old mafia heir like a child, her hand stroking the back of my hair.
May you like
Standing outside the police station with my fists still shaking and my pride completely gone, I had realized the truth. The one person I trusted wasn’t my father’s money, my family’s influence, or the power behind our name. It was the woman everyone underestimated. The woman who had somehow become the only person holding our broken family together.
But the universe doesn’t let families like mine keep beautiful things. The universe demands a toll. And the collector was on his way home.
