Chapter 99: I KNOW THINGS ABOUT HIM NOW

Chapter 101

Lumi

It took three more weeks before the words finally started arriving in the right order.

The speech therapist came twice a week by then, a patient woman named Odalys who never once let her face fall when I failed, who treated every broken syllable like it was worth celebrating rather than mourning.

She taught me to slow everything down, to feel the shape of a word in my mouth before I tried to force it out into the air.

Consonants first. Then whole syllables. Then, one Thursday afternoon, an entire sentence that came out crooked and slurred but complete.

Ren was there for that one. He always found a way to be there.

"Say it again," he said, and I could hear how carefully he was keeping his voice level, the way he’d learned to keep it level around me these past months, like he was afraid too much feeling in his tone might knock the sentence right back out of my reach.

"I need... to tell you," I said, each word dragged up out of somewhere that still didn’t feel entirely like mine. "Something."

He went very still. He was sitting in the chair he’d claimed as his weeks ago, close enough to the bed that our knees nearly touched, and I watched something shift behind his eyes, the way it always did whenever I managed a whole thought without it collapsing halfway through.

"Take your time," he said. "I’m not going anywhere."

So I told him.

I told him slowly, in pieces, some days managing only a sentence or two before my jaw gave out and Odalys’s exercises stopped being enough to hold the words together.

But I told him. I told him about the smell of that house, and the sound of the floorboard behind me, and the moment I turned around and saw a face I hadn’t seen in years standing where a stranger should have been.

I watched his hands curl into fists on his knees when I got to the part about the money.

I watched his jaw lock tight when I told him what my father had said about wanting me gone before I was even born.

I saw something darker than anger move behind his eyes when I finally forced out the word knife, and I had to stop there, that day, because my whole body had started shaking and I couldn’t get another word past the fear rising back up my throat.

He didn’t push me. He never once pushed me. He just reached over and took my good hand in both of his and held it until the shaking eased, and told me, low and steady, that we could finish the rest whenever I was ready, that there was no clock running on this, that he would sit in that chair every single day for the rest of his life if that was what it took.

It took four more days before I told him the rest.

I told him about the letter, about Theo’s name and his name and Neve’s name coming out of my father’s mouth.

I told him I hadn’t believed a word of what I wrote, that every sentence of that letter had been built to sound like the truth while being nothing but a weapon aimed at the people I loved most.

I told him I’d picked up that bottle myself, that no one had forced my hand around it, because the alternative had been watching my father make good on every name he’d spoken.

And then, because I owed him the whole of it, I told him about Callum.

I watched his face when I said it. I watched the exact moment the two halves of it locked together in his mind.

Ren didn’t say anything for a long moment after that. He sat there with my hand still held in both of his, his thumb moving slowly back and forth over my knuckles, staring at some point past my shoulder like he was working something out in his head that had nothing to do with words at all.

"He’s still out there," I said, when the silence had stretched long enough that I needed to break it myself. "My father. Nobody’s even looking for him."

"They are now," Ren said.

I looked up at him. There was something in his voice I hadn’t heard before, not quite in that tone, not even the night he’d sat beside my hospital bed swearing he’d tear the city apart to find me.

This was quieter. Colder. The voice of a man who had already made a decision and was simply informing me of it rather than asking permission.

"Ren."

"I let Callum think he’d won," he said. "I let him think he was untouchable because I needed him comfortable enough to slip.

He’s still slipping, Lumi. Every day he’s certain of himself is another day he gets careless. And now I know exactly who to be looking for standing behind him."

"He could be anywhere by now," I said. "He’s had months."

"He’s had months to think he’s safe," Ren said.

"That’s not the same thing as actually being safe. Men who believe they’ve gotten away with something get sloppy. They come back for things. They can’t help themselves."

He leaned forward, closing the last of the distance between us, resting his forehead lightly against mine, careful the way he was always careful with me now.

"I am going to find him, Lumi. I don’t care how long it takes, and I don’t care what it costs. I promised you once that nobody would touch you again, and I meant every word of it. This isn’t finished just because he walked out of that house thinking he’d won."

"And if you find him?"

He pulled back just far enough to look at me properly, and whatever softness had been in his face a moment before was gone entirely, replaced by something harder.

"Then he learns what it costs a man to put his hands on my mate," he said. "And on my child, even the one he never got the chance to meet."

I felt my throat tighten at that, the old grief for the baby we’d lost rising up sharp and sudden the way it still did some days, catching me off guard in the middle of an ordinary sentence.

The baby.

I’d found out about him few weeks after I regained my memories.

Ren had told me because he said he didn’t want to keep anything from me.

I’d let the tears flow without stopping them, they needed to be let out.

For years, I’d been looking for a child of my own. But when I got it, I wasn’t given the chance to hold it.

Ren had promised we’d make another baby, but we both know it wasn’t guaranteed.

I wished there was something I’d done to protect my baby. I wished I hadn’t gone there that night.

I wished I’d not gotten involved with Callum.

But I can only but wish.

"I don’t want you doing something that gets you locked away too," I said, when I trusted my voice again. "I’ve lost enough people to that house. I’m not losing you to it as well."

"You won’t," he said. " I’m not walking into this blind, driven by nothing but rage. I’m going to do this properly. Darren’s already started pulling everything we have... flight records, old addresses, anyone who might still have contact with him.

If your father made one call to Callum, he made others. Men like that don’t operate alone, and men who don’t operate alone leave a trail eventually, no matter how careful they think they’ve been."

"He said he’d been watching me for years," I said. "He knew things about the company. About Theo. About things I never told anyone outside this pack."

Ren’s expression sharpened at that, and I could see him filing it away.

"Then someone’s been feeding him information," he said. "Which means there’s a thread somewhere we haven’t found yet. And I promise you, I am going to pull on every single one of them until it leads me straight to him."

I looked at him for a long moment, at the exhaustion still sitting heavy under his eyes from months of sitting in that chair beside my bed.

"Thank you," I said. "For not letting me go through this alone."

"You were never going to go through it alone," he said.

"Not while I’m breathing." He brought my hand up and pressed a kiss against my knuckles, the same gesture he’d made a hundred times over the months I couldn’t feel it, and I felt it now, warm and solid and real.

"You get to finish healing. That’s the only job you have right now. Let me handle the rest."

"I want to help," I said. "When I can. I know things about him now that no one else does."

"You will," he said. "When you’re ready, and not a single day before. I’m not losing you to this the way I nearly lost you to that house. We do this together, but we do it on your timeline, not his."

I nodded, and let myself lean into him properly for the first time in longer than I could remember, my head resting against his shoulder, his arm coming around me careful and certain all at once.

"We’ll find him," Ren said quietly, into my hair, like he’d heard the thought without me needing to say it aloud at all.

"And when we do, he is going to learn exactly what happens to a man who mistakes my mercy for weakness."

I believed him. I had never once had a reason not to.