He Signed My Freedom Now He Wants Me Back Chapter 41
Before winter set in, the Tidewatch Registry informed me that someone from Highridge had been checking Moonleaf’s business records.
Elias had also noticed an unfamiliar car parked on the corner for several days in a row.
“Should I ask the territorial patrol to handle it?” he asked.
“Not yet.” I looked out the window at the car. “I know who it is.”
Lucian had found Tidewatch.
A few days later, a sealed envelope arrived at the bookstore. Inside were photographs of me, Elias, and Chloe.
Outside the bookstore. At the fairground. Outside a pottery studio.
In the last photo, I was bent down, wiping clay from Chloe’s face while Elias stood behind us, holding three cups of hot tea.
On the back of the photograph, Lucian had written only one line.
*Who is this man?*
I turned the photos over to the territorial patrol for their records.
He still thought he had the right to interrogate my life.
That afternoon, Elias and I took Chloe to the pottery studio. She made a lopsided little rabbit and proudly held it up for me to see.
“Doesn’t it look good?”
I dabbed a little clay onto the tip of her nose.
“It would look even better with a round nose.”
Chloe squealed and dabbed some back. A spot of clay flew onto my face—and onto Elias’s glasses.
With a helpless sigh, he took them off and used a handkerchief to wipe the clay from my cheek.
As he leaned close, he paused.
“May I?”
I nodded.
The cloth brushed lightly against my skin. Ember gave no warning. She only let me hear the steady rhythm of my own heartbeat.