Page 29 of Ugly Truths (The Veiled Truths Trilogy #2)

Elena

“W e’ve identified metadata references connected to Sierra Blanca, Texas,” Ben announces through the speaker. My head snaps up from my laptop and toward Davey’s phone on the coffee table, interest piqued.

For about two weeks, Davey has made it a part of his routine to stop by Silas’s mansion in the late afternoon.

His mornings are spent working on-site with Luis, Ben, and Corey until he leaves them under Paul’s supervision—along with a rotating set of Silas’s security team—so he can focus on his regular workload.

Then, without fail, he comes here, settling in for the daily debrief.

Usually, Davey finds me in the music room, either on the lounge chair or by the window, laptop open, trying to keep myself busy while Silas sticks to his usual office schedule. His presence has been a welcome change of pace, considering how confusing things have been between me and Silas.

Some days, it feels like we’re making real progress.

Silas asks the hard questions, and I answer every one of them.

On those days, we have endless communication and understanding.

There’s nothing I can or want to hide, and the approval radiates from him.

By the time we’re done talking, he’s reaching for me or I’m reaching for him, trying to soothe the jagged cuts of whatever difficult conversation we had to claw our way through.

And for those fleeting moments, I think we’re healing .

But those good days are inevitably followed by colder ones, and the distance feels like an impassable chasm.

I can see the way his mind tries to reconcile the person I am now with the one who broke his trust. Those moments have branded me with a shame I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, but I follow his lead.

It’s the least I owe him.

In a way, Silas's going back to the office has helped. There’s something almost easier about having a clear structure to our days. It’s given us space to breathe and adjust to this strange, new state of existence together.

“Davey told me this morning,” Silas responds, voice coming through the phone. “Have you figured out what the connection is yet?”

Ben clears his throat. “No. The location markers weren’t explicitly labeled, but we found them embedded in metadata strings across several archived files.

When we cross-referenced them with older logs, Sierra Blanca kept coming up.

Someone intentionally embedded the location, like they wanted it hidden but still traceable if you knew what to look for. ”

I frown at the phone. “But everything on the cloud was pointing to New Mexico.”

“We’ve been discussing why that might be,” Luis says, “but we hadn’t thought of anything that felt reasonable yet.”

In the holding room, I told Davey and Cillian about the Wells cloud referencing coordinates in New Mexico.

They were quick to assume it was connected to a research and manufacturing facility the company operates in Deming.

On paper, the place is spotless. Fully regulated, every protocol followed to the letter.

The only red flag was that all of the facility’s most sensitive data is stored locally, so there’s no legitimate reason for any encrypted file on the cloud to point there in the first place.

Davey took a closer look himself, but couldn’t get past most of the encryption.

He told me it was a miracle Ben and Corey even managed to extract the warehouse location when they did .

What little he could see looked painfully ordinary—standard reports, outdated forms, facility logs. The kind of baseline paperwork he’d expect to be floating around in internal archives, which only made the cloud references to Deming even weirder.

Corey finally breaks the silence, impatience edging his words. “Does Sierra Blanca mean anything to you?”

Silas answers immediately. “No. I’ve barely heard of it.” For a moment, there’s only silence. Then, Silas exhales sharply, controlled but clearly irritated. “Is there anything else useful you’ve gathered?”

Another pause.

“No,” Luis mutters.

Another long breath is audible through the line. “Alright. Let’s wrap up for today, but keep your focus on Sierra Blanca.” With a slight shift in his tone, Silas adds, “Lena, will you stay on the line?”

I nod even though he can’t see me. “Sure.”

Ben, Corey, and Luis mumble their goodbyes before dropping off. Davey makes no move to leave, sinking back into the couch as his hands flick across his keyboard in sure strokes.

Snagging his phone off the table as I place my laptop down, I take it off speaker and press it to my ear.

“What’s up?” I ask, moving to stand from my spot on the floor. My muscles strain after sitting on the carpet next to the coffee table for so long. I stretch my free hand over the top of my head.

“Natalie is on her way over right now. She should be there in a few minutes. You're going to want to get changed into something you can work out in.”

“Work out in?” I repeat, eyebrows knitting together. “Why?”

“Jeff will be there in half an hour to work out with you,” Silas says simply.

Every muscle in my body tenses, and I swear I can feel my system short-circuit. Even as a strange heat blooms in my chest, I’m half-convinced I misheard him.

“Silas,” I finally say, my voice slow with disbelief, “you hired Jeff? ”

“He was reluctant at first,” Silas says, sounding slightly amused. “But I told him who it was for and he suddenly changed his tune.”

For months, I’d told myself I’d never see Jeff again. It was better that way. He and Lauren had done more than enough. They let me fall apart in private and gave me the space to exist between survival and recovery. Even now, I never let myself consider it, no matter how much I missed them.

Silas didn’t have to give me this; he doesn’t owe me anything, especially not an olive branch, but he’s offering me one anyway.

I open my mouth, close it, and then try again. “And Natalie agreed to this?”

“Unhappily,” he admits, though his tone betrays no actual concern.

I let out a breath, pinching my nose to keep emotions back. “You’re unbelievable,” I mutter, voice cracking.

Silas chuckles. “Am I now?” I can hear the smile in his words. “You miss him and need the outlet.”

I swallow hard. Davey isn’t looking directly at me, but the smirk curling his lips tells me he’s silently enjoying my reaction. The knot in my throat tightens.

“Thank you,” I whisper, then laugh. “He's going to kick my ass.”

“I have no doubt you’ll bounce back just fine.”

“Elena? Dave?” Natalie calls out somewhere in the mansion.

Davey stands without a word, closing his laptop and placing it on the coffee table before striding toward the door to find his wife.

“I'll see you when I get home,” Silas promises.

“Okay,” I respond. Three additional words threaten to spill out, but I refrain. I’d said them that one time in Natalie’s kitchen weeks ago, but I never want him to feel obligated to say it back. He deserves to decide if he does without pressure from me. “Thank you again.”

When Silas speaks, his voice is low, almost reverent. “Anything for you, Lena. You know that. ”

The line clicks off before I can respond, and I stare down at the phone, my fingers curling around it as something warm and unsteady presses against my ribs.

I push out a slow breath and follow Natalie’s voice down the hallway.

—

Cillian snorts from the desk chair he dragged out from the basement office. It echoes through the room just as Jeff flips me over his back and slams me onto the mat. The impact steals all of my oxygen.

“You really are rusty,” Jeff grunts as he looms over me, hands on his hips, exposing his mouthguard with a smirk. “C’mon. Get up.”

I glare up at him, the sting of humiliation bubbling in my gut. Silas, in his ever-meticulous way, rearranged part of the gym to fit a full section of grappling mats. Of course, he couldn’t just leave me alone to be rusty in peace—he had to set the stage for my failure in high definition.

“I’ve gotta say,” Cillian begins, still grinning. “I’ve missed watching you do this.”

“I’m going to kick your ass next,” I snap, ignoring the burning in my lungs as I roll onto my knees and push myself to my feet. My body aches already, but I refuse to let them see how much this is taking out of me.

“That’s the spirit,” Jeff replies, bouncing lightly on the balls of his feet. He’s already circling me, eyes darting from my toes back to my face.

I square my shoulders and meet his gaze head-on. My pride won’t let me back down now, not with Cillian watching, as if this is the best show he’s seen all week.

“You got it, El,” Natalie huffs out from the treadmill Jeff stuck her on, breathless but encouraging.

Sweat drips from her brow as she struggles to keep pace.

After Jeff’s quick assessment of her fitness level, he decided endurance was her first priority, and she’s been pounding away on the treadmill for the last forty-five minutes .

“Don't give her too much credit,” Jeff quips, sparing Natalie a quick glance as he circles me again. “You’re lucky I’m not flipping you onto this mat, too.”

Natalie rolls her eyes, though her focus doesn’t falter from the treadmill’s unrelenting rhythm. “Please. I could take you down in five seconds if I wanted to.” She flashes a playful smirk, but the effort in her voice betrays just how hard she’s pushing herself.

“Let’s stick to jogging for now, champ,” Jeff fires back, returning his attention to me. “Alright, kid. Ready?”

“Bring it, old man,” I grit out, planting my feet firmly on the mat. The ache in my ribs is a reminder of just how out of shape I’ve become.

Jeff snorts, the corner of his mouth quirking into a grin. “Trash talk like that will only make me work you harder.”

“Good,” I retort, wiping my forehead and dropping into a defensive stance. “Maybe you'll actually break a sweat this time.”