Chapter 22 · The Driver's Initials

The brass was bent nearly in half. Chewed up. The Castellane crest still stamped clean into the head.

My hand wouldn't stop shaking.

I looked back down at the last page of my father's cipher. Six nights I'd spent bleeding over these columns. Tonight it finally gave up.

March 14th.

Twelve years ago. The exact night a state trooper knocked on our screen door and my mother dropped onto the hallway stairs like someone had cut her hamstring.

Right next to the date, written in my father's tight, paranoid scrawl, sat two letters.

D.C.

Not a code. Not shorthand. Just initials, inked faint, like he'd been terrified to press the pen down.

"No," I whispered.

The basement dehumidifier rattled back at me.

I ran the substitution again. Numbers don't lie. Men do. Every column matched. Every carry held. My dad had logged who was behind the wheel for the quarry run. And three weeks later, he logged the ignition key with the Castellane crest stamped on it, followed by five words: *Boy kept it. Won't hand it over.*

The boy.