Page 52 of Fate, Interrupted

“Close the door.”

I do it. The latch catches with a final click.

He doesn’t speak right away. He stays where he is for a moment, looking out over the yard below, taking its measure rather than just looking. Then he turns, folds his hands loosely on the desk, and studies me with the patience of a man who has already decided what he’s going to say and is in no hurry about when he says it.

He learned that patience a long time ago.

Logan learned it from him.

It never took with me.

“What’s this about?” I ask. There’s no point beating about the bush, and I’d rather be proactive with the old man than sit here and wait for the inquisition.

He doesn’t answer the question directly.

“Who is the human woman?”

The words drop between us, and for a moment my mind flinches at the mention of Norah landing in this room where shady business deals are made, the dodgy business of running two accounting books is barely spoken of, and his young, untested males are given marching orders to patrol pack boundaries and terrorize other packs that cross without permission.

I don’t speak. The perverse side of me doesn’t want to make this easy on him.

“Silas.”

I lean back slightly in the chair. In my most guileless fashion, I say, “What human woman?”

He gives me the look that makes the deflection feel exactly as pointless as it is.

“The one you have been seen with repeatedly in town.”

It comes out without accusation, without heat, which is the thing about my father—he doesn’t need volume. He’s never needed it. The flatness of his delivery is the signature of a man who has already done the work of being angry and arrived somewhere past it.

My first instinct is irritation. “Logan told you.”

“No.”

The answer comes immediately and without qualification.

That stops me faster than a raised voice would have. I look at him more carefully, measuring what he knows against what he’s choosing to reveal, and find the uncomfortable experience of being further behind in a conversation than I realized.

“If Logan didn’t tell you,” I say, “then who did?”

He picks up the pen, turns it once between his fingers, then sets it back down in exactly the same position.

“You have been seen in town with the same woman on multiple occasions,” he says. “The bookstore. The bar. The hardware store on Clement, yesterday, here. And I don’t employ Logan to spy for me.”

Just all your other henchmen who do your bidding. I think it without saying it. The irritation goes cold.

Because I let myself believe this would stay small. That this was contained to the spaces it happened in.

Clearly, I was wrong about that.

He lets the silence run before asking the next question.

“What’s her name?”

There’s no reason not to answer that. “Norah.”

He nods once.