CHAPTER 15

TYRA

I stay at a hotel for the rest of the night. Janet and Jane's father, Gabriel—Mr. Gabriel—offers me a room in their home, but I tell him I'd prefer to be alone. "I don't want any chance to be questioned" is what I'm actually thinking. Jane stays with me. She's like me in that way—neither of us wants to be left alone with our thoughts.

She feels guilty for agreeing to drive so far away. She thinks Tiana's death is her fault. I know better. In some ways, her death was inevitable from the moment she decided to help me. And she knew it too.

We cry until we have no tears left, and then we just sit in silence, wrapped in exhaustion and grief. The quiet between us is oddly comforting. I'm grateful she's here. I don't know what I would have done to myself if I were alone. Nothing good, that's for sure.

It's past three in the morning when I finally ask, "How do you know them? How are you connected to them?"

She doesn't answer right away, and for a moment, I think she'll ignore me. Which is understandable. But then she speaks. Her voice is hoarse, almost hollow.

"My father. My real father… they killed him."

"The man that helped with—" I want to say corpse, but the word gets stuck in my throat, too heavy to push out. "With Tiana. He's not your dad?"

"He is… too. Janet and I call him Dad Two." She forces a small, distant smile, but it doesn't reach her eyes.

"Why? Why did they…?" Kill him is what I want to say, but saying it out loud makes this—them—more and more real. I'm not ready for that to be my reality yet.

"He tried to leave. He tried to run." She lets out a shaky breath, wiping at her face. "He worked for them while he was in America. Tenebris. But then he met my mom. Had us. And he didn't want in anymore."

She pauses, her fingers twisting the hem of her sleeve. It was gold. She seemed to always be wearing gold. "He wasn't even doing the worst of it. He was just an accountant. But I guess that was enough justification for them to take him out. He knew too much. Saw too much. He promised to stay quiet, but they couldn't take that kind of risk.

"They let him go. Let him think he was safe. He came home to Nigeria, hoping to leave it all behind. He must have had no idea he was walking right into the den itself.

"And the moment he relaxed, the moment he let his guard down, they came."

Her voice cracks, and she takes a deep breath, like she's bracing herself for the next part.

"They killed him. Right in front of us. We were eight years old. And they… they slaughtered him in front of his little girls."

I flinch at the word slaughtered and swallow hard. It's one thing to hear about Tenebris' crimes in whispers, to piece them together like a puzzle from the outside. It's another to sit across from someone who lived through it. Someone who was a child, watching their world collapse, knowing no one was coming to save them. Jane and Janet were eight. Just eight. What does that do to a person? What does that turn them into?

"My mom—she fell into depression after that. She almost killed herself."

Jane is crying again, and I wish I had never asked.

Tenebris.

The name churns in my mind like poison.

"And Dad Two?" I don't know why I push on. Something tells me there's more to the man I met tonight. Mr. Gabriel, with his olive skin and piercing green eyes, the way he carried himself with unshakable authority. He looked like the kind of person I wouldn't even wish on my worst enemy.

Jane sniffs, wiping her face. "He saved my mom. But he wasn't perfect. In fact, he was very far from perfect. He was also involved with Tenebris—bad luck on my mom's part—but he pulled her out of her depression. Forced her to go to therapy, helped her heal, and raised Janet and me when she couldn't. He loved us like we were his own.

"But we weren't.

"He had another daughter. Somewhere else. With someone who worked in Tenebris, apparently. She was sick. Really sick. Born with some kind of disease or something.

"Janet and I had a big recital that evening. I played violin, and Janet danced ballet. He had promised to be there.

"He had this bad habit of leaving, of disappearing, so we started asking him to promise. Every single day, for two months, we reminded him. Two months straight, we drilled it into his head. The date. The time. We made him swear.

"But surprise, surprise. He wasn't there."

Her voice is thick with resentment.

"Mom couldn't come either. Our youngest brother—his own son—was just one year old at the time. Mom couldn't leave him, so Janet and I performed in front of a packed audience. And he wasn't there."

She laughs bitterly, shaking her head. "He was with her. His daughter. Not with us.

"They think we don't know. Mom and Dad. They must think we're idiots.

"Last week, at the hospital—do you know why Janet had to leave?"

I shake my head.

"Her. He brought her to our house. Made Janet babysit. The nerve of that man. To bring the sole reason for every problem in our home, right into the middle of it."

"And then, as if he hasn't done enough damage, he brings her to fix Jason like some kind of magic solution. Like she's supposed to undo years of what he caused. Jason's BPD? That's his fault. He raised him in that chaos, in that mess. He made him feel like he was never enough, like he had to earn love that should've been given freely. And now, when Jason is breaking under the weight of it all, when he can barely hold himself together, he decides it's time to step in? But not by taking responsibility, no. He just drags some girl into it and expects her to fix the damage he caused. Like she even could."

She clenches her fists, her nails digging into her palms.

"He couldn't even care to ask what we think. Nooo. He just brought her—bloodied and barely conscious—and expected us to deal with it.

"She stabbed him, Tyra. She stabbed him. And he still doesn't care. He loves her so much it makes him blind to the rest of us.

"It's so damn infuriating. To work so hard for his attention, for his love, for him, and never get it. Why? Because she has it.

"She looks… she looks just like him."

Her voice cracks, and suddenly, she's sobbing.

I don't know what else to do so I just pull her into a hug.

The silence between us deepens, suffocating. What do you even say after something like that? How do you respond to a story like that when your world feels just as broken, just as close to shattering? It makes me think about the way I've been running, fighting, trying to piece together my own shattered bits. But what if I'm already too far gone? What if there's no coming back from the chaos I'm tangled in?

It's not just Jane and Janet who've suffered. It's not just them who've had their childhoods ripped away. In some twisted way, Tenebris has taken something from all of us. Something we can never get back.

I close my eyes, feeling the weight of their story press down on me. And I know, deep down, that there's no going back. Not now. We're all too far gone. And Tenebris? They'll stop at nothing. They'll never stop and they're coming for me.

She cries herself to sleep, and I stay up. Sleep-deprived and restless until day breaks.

As the first light of the morning filters through the window, the weight in my pocket grows heavier. Heavier until I can't ignore it anymore.

I dip my hand into my pocket and pull it out.

The box Tiana gave me.

My breath catches as I turn it over in my hands. The material is soft—black velvet. There's something on the lid. A symbol.

The same symbol tattooed on the nurse's wrist.

The same symbol tattooed on Mr. Gabriel's wrist.

A gold and black 'T,' with a dagger forming its base. The edges of the 'T' are sharp, like a weapon itself, the dagger curving beneath it, is almost alive with a deadly purpose. The symbol feels cold, like it was designed to burn into your memory, leaving a mark you could never erase.

The symbol now tattooed in my mind and soul. It's permanent. It's real.

I'd said the name out loud now. This was my reality, and there was no escape. It was no longer just some distant shadow haunting the corners of my thoughts. It was here, alive, suffocating me. There was no turning back. No way to forget it.

Tenebris.

They finally had a name.