I could not breathe.
“For ransom?”
“At first, we thought so.”
My mouth went dry. “Who took him?”
He looked at the portrait again.
“Margot Ellery.”
Celeste’s mother.
The name filled the library like smoke.
My father continued, each word measured as if speaking too quickly might shatter him.
“Black Harbor collapsed because Margot and her partners were stealing from it. When I exposed them, she lost everything. Money, access, protection. She blamed me. She took Nathaniel from the marina during a family event.”
My hand went to my throat.
“My mother said he drowned.”
“She believed that was all you should know.”
“And you?”
“I agreed.”
“Why?”
His face twisted, just once.
“Because you were four years old. Because you woke every night asking why your brother wasn’t coming home. Because your mother stopped eating. Because I had already failed one child and thought hiding the horror from the other was mercy.”
