Page 112 of Fractured Loyalties
I pull it out.
It’s Elias’s.
Not his field notes. Not ops. This one’s different.
It’s names.
Dates.
Small, sharp notes in block print.
And one of them is mine.
Just my name. No date. No details.
But it’s there.
Circled once. Notated with a single word beside it in his tight, unmistakable hand:
“Variable.”
I exhale slowly. The weight of that word doesn’t scare me.
It confirms what I already know.
To Elias, I’m not a weakness.
I’m a factor.
Which means he’s already planning how to use me—or protect me—depending on how the board moves.
And that...that’s something I can work with.
I return the notebook. Close the cabinet.
And as I climb back up the stairs.
By the time I’m back in the main house, the light in the bedroom has shifted again—full now, pushing hard against the edges of the curtains. It paints long bars across the floor, across the bed, across the place where he slept like the echo of a body that’s already left.
I sit on the edge of it, fingertips against the sheets, and I let myself feel the space he left behind.
Not the absence. The shape of him. The heat.
It’s a strange thing, to miss someone like this. When they’re not really gone. When you know they’re still out there, still moving, still bleeding for a life you haven’t been allowed to fully touch.
My hand closes around the burner in my pocket.
This time, I do press the screen.
It doesn’t power up. I don’t let it.
But the screen flickers—just once. A heartbeat. A test. A single, silent message encoded in that flicker: Not yet.
Then I slide it back away.
Because if I turn it on, I’ll be seen. If I light that signal, I won’t just be watching. I’ll be inviting the past into the same room where I’ve started to build something with him.
And I don’t know yet if the walls will survive it.
