PART 2
The silence in the room was absolute, broken only by the ragged, terrified breaths of Douglas Harlan.
Evan looked between his retching father and my elderly uncle, his smug grin finally faltering. “Dad? Get up, you’re embarrassing us. It’s just an old man.”
“Shut up, Evan,” Douglas hissed, his voice trembling as he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He didn’t dare stand up straight. He stayed hunched over, his hands flat on his knees, looking at Uncle Simon like a man staring into the barrel of a loaded shotgun. “You don’t know who that is. Shut your mouth.”
Uncle Simon didn’t look at Douglas. He didn’t look at Evan. He kept his eyes on me, his expression softening just a fraction. He reached out with a scarred, calloused hand and gently tucked the hospital blanket around my son’s tiny shoulders.
“I told you to close your eyes, sweetheart,” Simon said, his voice a low, rhythmic rumble. Without his hearing aids, he spoke with a flat, eerie calm that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
“Simon,” Douglas choked out, his knees visibly shaking under his heavy leather jacket. “Please. We didn’t know. I swear to Almighty God, we didn’t know she belonged to you.”
“You knew she belonged to someone,” Simon said, turning slowly to face Douglas. The frail, limping school librarian was gone. In his place stood a shadow from a dark history. “You knew she was a human being. But you thought she was alone.”
Evan, fueled by a toxic mix of pride and sheer ignorance, stepped into Simon’s space. “Listen here, old man, I don’t care what kind of history you have with my dad. This is my wife, this is my kid, and this is my—”
Simon didn’t yell. He didn’t even raise his hand. He simply took one step forward, shifting his weight off his bad knee, and looked Evan dead in the eye.
The sheer weight of that gaze stopped Evan mid-sentence. It was the look of a man who had looked at monsters in the dark and made them blink. Evan’s jaw remained open, but no sound came out. A bead of sweat rolled down his temple.
“Thirty years ago, Douglas,” Simon said, his voice entirely conversational, “I watched you and your crew run a racket out of the docks. You thought you were kings. I told you then, if I ever saw your shadow cross anything I cared about, I wouldn’t just clip your wings. I’d tear down the whole damn nest.”
Douglas nodded frantically, his eyes wide. “I remember. I remember, Simon. We left. We stayed away.”
“And yet,” Simon gestured vaguely toward my throat, where the dark bruises were throbbing, “here we are. Your bloodline is making messes on my family.”
“We’ll leave,” Douglas pleaded, grabbing Evan by the jacket collar and pulling him backward. “We’ll leave the state. Evan is signing the divorce papers. He’s relinquishing custody. Whatever you want.”
“Dad, what the hell are you doing?!” Evan shrieked, finally breaking out of his paralysis. “He’s seventy years old! We can take him!”
Douglas slapped his son across the face. The crack echoed in the small room.
“You idiot!” Douglas roared, tears of genuine terror springing to his eyes. “You stupid, arrogant little boy! Do you know what that tattoo means? Do you know what his unit did? If he wanted to, we wouldn’t make it out of this parking lot. Our house would burn with us inside it, and the police would call it an electrical fire! You sign whatever he wants, or I will kill you myself before he gets the chance!”
Evan stared at his father, the reality of his situation finally sinking in. The superficial armor of his wealth, his company, and his bullying stature shattered into dust. He looked at me, then at the baby, and finally at Simon.
For the first time since I had met him, Evan looked small.
Simon reached into his brown coat pocket. Evan flinched, throwing his hands up to protect his face. But Simon didn’t pull out a weapon. He pulled out a sleek, modern smartphone, tapped the screen a few times, and held it up.
“Your company’s financial records,” Simon said mildly. “The offshore accounts. The supply chain anomalies. It took my friends about twenty minutes to find them after Serena called me from the ambulance.” He lowered the phone. “You have exactly one hour to get your lawyer on the phone. You will agree to a full, uncontested divorce. You will sign away all parental rights to Owen. And you will transfer the deed of the house to Serena’s name as a penalty for the medical bills you’ve caused.”
“That’s everything I have,” Evan whispered, his voice cracking.
“Then you’re lucky,” Simon replied, stepping close enough that his coat brushed Evan’s chest. “Because if you hesitate, I’ll stop being a retired librarian. And you’ll find out exactly what a black dagger does to a broken crown.”
Douglas didn’t wait for his son to answer. He grabbed Evan by the arm and dragged him toward the door, practically throwing him out into the hallway.
Before the door swung shut, Douglas turned back, bowing his head deeply. “It’s done, Simon. It’s done. We’re gone.”
The heavy wooden door clicked shut. The frantic, terrified energy of the Harlan men vanished, leaving only the quiet hum of the hospital monitors.
Uncle Simon stood still for a moment, letting out a long, heavy breath. The tension in his shoulders melted away, and the terrifying aura he had carried just seconds ago dissolved. He limped back over to the bedside tray, picked up his hearing aids, and carefully clicked them back into his ears.
He turned to me and smiled, his eyes warm and crinkling at the corners.
“Are they gone, kiddo?” he asked, his normal, slightly loud voice returning.
I let out a breath I felt like I’d been holding for a year. Tears finally spilled over my eyelashes, hot and relieving, washing away the terror. I nodded.
“They’re gone, Uncle Simon.”
He walked over, sat down in the chair Evan had occupied, and reached into the paper bag, pulling out an apple muffin. He broke it in half and offered me the bigger piece.
“Good,” Simon said, looking down at my sleeping son. “Now, let’s talk about little Owen’s future. I think he’s going to grow up to be a very fine, very safe young man.”
