Chapter 3: So You’re Over a Century Old?

Silas's eyelid twitched.

Vera's aim was still sharp, even after becoming a mom. If that apple had been someone's neck, they'd need a cleanup crew. He forced himself to swallow, his fingers gripping the leather armrest so hard they left marks.

Shelley was still curled up in his lap. She looked up at him with a big smile. "Dad, when I grow up, I want to help cows have babies and drive those big farm machines. We can all live on the farm together. Forever and ever."

The pure hope in her voice hit him right in the chest. Silas didn't do feelings.

Vera came out from the kitchen doorway, the boning knife glinting in the light. She wore a smile that could sell cookies. But her grip on that knife said something else entirely.

She hooked two fingers into Silas's collar and dragged him toward the kitchen. "Excuse us, sweetheart. Mommy and Daddy need to talk about farm stuff."

The kitchen door slammed so hard it shook dust loose from the frame.

"Have you lost your mind?" Vera hissed, pressing the flat side of the blade against his jaw. The cold metal made his throat bob. "A farmer? Delivering baby cows? What's next, Silas? You going to teach her to use dead bodies as fertilizer?"

Silas put both hands up. "Baby, look at her face. She's loving it. Eyes like a puppy seeing meat for the first time. This is exactly what you wanted. Normal, remember? Boring?"

"There's a difference between simple and stupid." Vera's eyes narrowed to thin green slits. "She's not growing up thinking cows need therapy. She's starting at Iliad International tomorrow. End of discussion."

Silas groaned. "Iliad? That's where rich kids go. Trust fund babies and politicians' kids. You want to throw a rabbit into a tank of sharks?"

"Shayne's going too. He spends too much time in that basement. He needs to learn how to talk to people who don't have chemical burns on their hands." Vera's smile turned sharp. "And he'll protect her. Anyone touches a hair on her head, Shayne can burn their whole family to the ground."

"The tuition alone—"

"Is not up for discussion." Vera's tone left no room for argument. "Don't even start."

Silas shut his mouth.

Dinner that night was a real contrast.

Shelley had a steak as big as her head, plus German sausage and a huge pile of mashed potatoes. She went at it with both hands, eating like someone who'd learned to grab what she could. You didn't get food like this in Eastside. You didn't get food at all if you didn't fight for it.

Across from her, Shayne picked at a plate of lettuce with olive oil, looking about as excited as someone doing their taxes. He arranged his kale into neat little patterns before eating each leaf one at a time.

"Eat some real food, Shayne. You're skinny as a stick." Silas pushed a bloody steak across the table.

Shayne didn't look up. "Meat digestion pulls blood away from the brain. Makes you dumber. Nutritionally wasteful." He pushed the steak back with one finger. "I have no interest in becoming like you."

"Becoming like me got me a wife, four kids, and a house. Becoming like you gets you vitamin problems and a restraining order."

Shelley spoke with her mouth full of beef. "If you don't eat meat, you can't run from bad guys. Then you just get beat up and cry."

Shayne looked at her with the kind of pity a scientist might have for someone who thinks the earth is flat. "When dealing with dangerous people, what matters is brains and hidden explosives. Not muscles. Your so-called strength wouldn't even slow down someone who really wanted to hurt you."

"I could bite them," Shelley offered.

"Your bite is about 120 pounds of force. That won't work on anything bigger than a house cat."

"Starting tomorrow," Vera cut in, her voice final as a judge's ruling, "Shayne and Shelley are going to Iliad International."

The mood at the table went ice cold.

"No." Shayne's fork stopped mid-air. "Those kids can barely do basic math and name colors. Being around them is a waste of time I could spend studying quantum physics."

"Too bad." Vera smiled and stuffed a bite of cherry pie into his mouth.

"If you don't go, I'm pouring all your basement chemicals down the drain. Your microscope gets sold for scrap. Your precious centrifuge becomes a flower pot." She leaned in, her voice dropping to a whisper sharp as a blade. "Your job is to protect your sister. Got it?"

Shayne's jaw clenched. He chewed the pie like a kid who just got beaten at his own game by someone with way more power than he could fight. His ears turned bright red, two burning spots on his pale face.

He turned to Shelley with a look that said, crystal clear, this is all your fault.

Shelley blinked at him with fake innocence and took another bite of steak. Some juice dripped down her chin.

Shayne looked away, disgusted.

The next morning, Vera turned Shelley into a walking marshmallow.

Thermal underwear. White puffy jacket so thick she could barely bend her arms. Red scarf wrapped around her neck three times. A knit hat with a pom-pom the size of a tennis ball. She waddled when she walked. Vera stepped back and looked at her work like a general inspecting troops.

"Perfect. You're adorable."

"I can't feel my arms, Mama."

"That's how you know it's working."

Shayne refused the coat Vera tried to put on him, sticking with his usual black turtleneck and a look cold enough to freeze hell over. He carried a leather bag that probably cost more than the Chevy and had exactly zero school supplies in it.

Silas drove them in the rattling old Chevy, his hands gripping the steering wheel tighter than usual. He kept checking the rearview mirror like someone might be tailing them. At every red light, he scanned the cross streets.

"Dad?" Shelley asked from the back seat, squeezed between Shayne and a door that didn't quite close all the way. "Are you okay?"

"Fine, princess. Just fine."

He was not fine. He was mapping escape routes, memorizing traffic patterns, and quietly tracking every car that had been behind them for more than three blocks. Old habits. The kind that kept you breathing when you were the most wanted man on three continents.

The Chevy rattled to a stop at the edge of Iliad's campus, its peeling paint and dented fender looking like trash next to the Rolls-Royces and Bentleys parked along the perfect street.

Silas turned to face them, forcing a smile that looked painted on. "Now remember. You're just regular kids from a regular family. Nothing special. Nobody asks, nobody tells."

"We live on a farm," Shelley said like she'd practiced.

"That's right. A very normal farm."

"With cows that need therapy after having babies."

"Shelley."

"Yes, Dad?"

"Just... don't go into details."

Shayne had already opened his door and stepped onto the sidewalk, standing stiff, his eyes scanning everything like someone who'd learned early that danger wore expensive cologne.

Shelley pressed her face to the window before getting out.

Wrought-iron gates twenty feet high, each bar twisted into the shape of laurel leaves. A gold crest in the center, the Iliad phoenix that looked like it was made with actual gold. Guys in charcoal suits opening car doors for kids in uniforms that probably had their own dry cleaners. The kids walked with their chins up, already practicing the look of people who would one day run the world.

Her stomach knotted.

This was Eton. Different name, same breed. Same smooth confidence, same smell of old money, same unspoken rules about who mattered and who was nobody.

The ghost of three hundred and twelve tower steps whispered in her ear.

She turned to Silas. "Dad... you said we were farmers. This place costs more per semester than our entire farm is worth. Probably more than the cow therapy budget."

Silas's eyes shifted. He was making it up as he went. Badly.

"Right. So. The headmaster used to be homeless. Starving on the street. And I, being a kind and generous person, gave him half my monthly milk supply. He got back on his feet, made his fortune, and insisted your education be free. Gratitude, princess. Couldn't say no without hurting his feelings."

Shelley's face didn't change. Something cold and old moved behind her eyes, something that had learned the hard way that adults lied, that kindness always came with a price, that the truth was usually uglier than the lie.

She pointed one mittened finger at the marble plaque by the gate.

"The plaque says Iliad was founded in 1920," she read, her kid voice clear and exact. "Funded by the Rothschild family and seven other rich families. All headmasters are picked by the Board of Trustees." She tilted her head. "So you gave your milk to a homeless guy in 1920, and he's still headmaster a hundred years later?"

Silas's face turned to stone. The fake smile hardened into something permanent. His throat moved up and down, but no sound came out.

How, his brain screamed at him, how did I not check that damn plaque.

"Dad," Shelley continued, her voice carrying the gentle patience of someone explaining things to a slow child, "you'd have to be over a hundred years old. Are you?"

Silas opened his mouth.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

"That's..." He cleared his throat. "That's a different... the headmaster I meant was... look, the point is, you're going to a really nice school. For free. Because Dad knows people."

"You know hundred-year-old people?"

"Shelley."

"Yes, Dad?"

"Get out of the car."

Shayne made a sound like a robot learning to laugh from a manual—technically right, emotionally off. It lasted exactly half a second. Then his face went back to its usual look of mild disgust.

Shelley pushed the car door open. The cold air hit her cheeks, sharp and instant. She watched the golden children streaming through the gates. Their shiny shoes clicked on the marble walkway. Their entitled laughter floated in the winter air, light and mean and completely unaware of how heavy the world could be.

She'd run from this world once.

She'd jumped from a tower to escape it.

And now, despite every plan, every desperate grab at normal life, every carefully laid scheme to disappear into comfortable middle-class anonymity, she'd landed right back at its doorstep.

Can I really escape? she wondered, her breath fogging in the December air. Or is this where I was always going to end up?

The gate loomed above her, iron wrapped around gold leaf, pretty as a cage. She knew what waited inside. She stepped forward anyway.