Page 41 of Fire and Silk
I watch her. Red eyes. Hair frizzed from the humidity. Fingers trembling around paper.
“And I want you to be here when she is.”
She stares at me. Searching for something in my face. A reason to trust. Or a reason not to.
“You don’t have to trust me,” I say. “But there’s so much more going on here than you know. I need you safe.”
Her face goes pale. She leans forward like the air just left her lungs. Her mouth opens but nothing comes out.
“Do as I say,” I tell her, “and you’ll be safe.”
She starts sobbing again. Not the kind that chokes or gasps—just raw. Her shoulders fold in on themselves like she’s collapsing inward.
I move. One step. Then another. I kneel down beside her couch, my boots pressing into the threadbare rug.
I reach out, careful, and pat her back. Once. Twice. My hand stays there.
She tilts her face to me, wet cheeks and all.
“Please... bring her back to me.”
My jaw locks. But in my chest, something final settles.
I will.
****
Western Suburbs, Victoria — To Dyer Hotel, Carlton
The streetlights throw long, thin shadows across the windshield as I ease the car into gear and pull away from Nicola’s complex. The building shrinks in the rearview mirror—dim-lit, hunched in its own peeling paint and rusted gates, a place that always feels too tired to fight the dark.
The drive back is quiet. Victoria’s night traffic is sparse this far out, and the only sound is the low hum of the engine and the occasional whisper of tires against uneven asphalt.
I keep one hand on the wheel, the other curled loose against my thigh. My chest is tight, but not from the cold. It’s the kind of weight that settles behind your ribs and doesn’t move. I’ve carried it a long time.
Lira.
She was the only part of that house that ever felt untouched. Still soft, still golden. I’d known Marco first—we met back in secondary school, both of us new in town, both of us with something to prove. We bonded the way teenage boys do—fistsfirst, then loyalty. The day he brought me home, I didn’t know what to expect.
But I remember walking into that house and seeing her.
Eleven years old. Barefoot in the hallway with ink-stained fingers and a ribbon falling from her hair. She squinted at me like she already knew me and asked if I liked lemon cake.
I remember the smell. Vanilla. Floor polish. A touch of dried herbs from the kitchen. It was the first time I felt warmth in someone else’s home. My own house had noise, yes, and dinners on the table sometimes—but not warmth. Not peace. My mother’s anger took up all the space. And my father… he just watched.
But Lira’s mother tucked my hair behind my ear without asking, the first week I came around. Marco started calling me his brother. And Lira… well, Lira adored me.
She didn’t hide it.
It started with notes. Anonymous, at first. Folded triangles slipped into my hoodie pocket or the back of my textbooks.
You’re really tall, like a tree. I like trees.
Do you think it’s weird to like someone older than you? I don’t.
Your eyes are always sad. But I like them that way. They look honest.
I kept them. Every one.
