Alive.
“Where?” my father demanded.
Calloway smiled.
“That depends on Evelyn.”
My blood froze.
He looked at me with grandfatherly tenderness.
“Bring me the rabbit, my dear. Bring me the ledger. Then you may have both sons.”
“Both?” I whispered.
Calloway’s smile widened.
Behind him, one of his men opened a tablet and turned the screen toward us.
A live video appeared.
A man sat tied to a chair in a room I did not recognize. He was older now, maybe thirty-four, with bruises on his face and golden hair darkened with sweat.
But his eyes—
I knew those eyes.
Nathaniel’s portrait had those eyes.
My mother sobbed once.
The man on the screen lifted his head.
And said, “Evie?”
PART 5 — THE RABBIT WITH A SILVER HEART
No one had called me Evie since I was four years old.
The name struck me harder than any threat.
The man on the screen blinked through blood and exhaustion, staring into the camera as though he could see across all the years stolen from us.
