Page 112 of Blackwood

“What do you mean your plane, sweetheart?” Cade asks.

She exhales like it hurts. “Remember how I said Zeke was stopping the buys?”

We both nod.

“Well, he’d been working on that for a while. Taking money from corrupt politicians, billionaires, anyone who paid to hurt kids. He was robbing them blind.”

Fucking genius man.

She swallows. “And he, uh, also hacked into some criminal families. Stole their Black Books.”

I suck in a breath.

Her voice calms, now personal. “That’s how Nate came into the picture.” She looks at Cade.

“Nate’s ex-something. Acronym type. FBI maybe. CIA. I don’t really know, but he’s brilliant. His sister was kidnapped and…”

She stops. Takes a breath. “…she didn’t make it.”

A long silence.

Her voice steadies, like steel hammered in fire. “Zeke, Tex, and Nate built Project Dylan. We get kids out of foster hellholes, away from abusive parents, and out of trafficking rings. We pull them out and drop the sellers and buyers in a hole so deep they can’t crawl out of. We use the Black Books as leverage, blackmail, pressure, and muscle.”

That fire in her is back, low and steady. A different kind of rage.

Purpose.

“I was trained but didn’t get to go on my first mission until my sixteenth birthday,” she adds quietly, like it still haunts her.

Cade cuts in, voice quiet but strained. “So, you’ve been going on these missions since you were sixteen?”

She nods. “Yeah. Zeke, Nate, and Tex pretty much raised me. Trained me to be a weapon for Project Dylan.”

“And you’re still doing these missions? Saving children?” Cade asks.

“Yes, Cade. I’m still saving kids.”

But then her voice flattens. Her eyes go cold. “Our mission changed my Freshman year. Zeke was on a mission in Chicago. We got a tip. Thought it was solid.” Her shoulders rise and fall once, like she’s trying to stay steady. “It was a trap. There was an explosion and… and..” her lip quivers, “my brother was murdered.”

Cade looks gutted. I just want names. She keeps going.

“Knox—”

“The DJ?” I ask.

She nods. “Yeah. He pulled me out of a bad state and got me to face it. In a very cruel and usual way for sure, but it worked better than the shrink.”

She glances at me. “Nate was near the blast. He still gets a little shaken up from time to time. Knox is a great hacker, almost Zeke level. He’s a major asset to the team.”

Cade’s voice cuts through the quiet, low and shaky. “If Knox knows all of this, then—”

She nods once. “The girls do too.”

He leans back like the wind got knocked out of him. “Dad’s birthday? When you missed the yacht outing?”

Her silence is the answer. But it’s the way she won’t meet his eyes that really says it. And I see it. The years of built-up closeness neither of them ever named. The kind of bond you don’t get from just dating. This shit runs deeper. Shared summers, family trips, midnight pick-ups, late-night texts when she wouldn’t talk to anyone else.

Cade’s jaw flexes. “You told them. But not me.”