Hunt Me, Veyre

PROLOGUE

THE MAN WHO STAYED

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JULIAN

Age Twelve

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My father told me he would come home before ten.

He made the promise that morning while adjusting the silver watch on his wrist at breakfast. Laurent sat across from him drinking coffee and arguing about something at the docks. Their conversation stopped when Mamma walked in, which meant they were discussing business I wasn’t supposed to hear.

“Eat first. You can discuss whatever disaster this is afterwards.”

Papà reached across and stole a piece of toast from my plate. “I am eating.”

“That’s mine.”

“You weren’t using it.”

Laurent laughed while Mamma reminded him he was thirty-eight and capable of feeding himself. I kicked Papà under the table when he told her I would survive.

On his way out, Papà rested one hand on my shoulder. “Finish the history chapter, Julian.”

“I already know what happens.”

“Then it should be easy.”

I looked up at him. “Are you back before ten?”

His attention moved briefly to Laurent, who waited by the door. “Before ten.”

“Promise?”

Papà frowned as though I insulted him. “Do I look unreliable?”

Mamma snorted. Laurent asked if I wanted the honest answer, and Papà told him to shut up in Italian before pushing him into the hall.

I believed him anyway. Papà treated schedules like suggestions everywhere else, but if he gave Elena or me a specific time, he meant it.

By half past nine, I sat in the smaller family room with a novel over my knees while Elena lay in front of the fire. Coloured pencils covered the carpet as she tried to fix a horse that looked worse every time she touched it.

Rain tapped against the windows while footsteps crossed the marble hall and a telephone rang near Nonno’s study. The house sounded ordinary enough that I could pretend I wasn’t waiting. I read the same paragraph three times without understanding it.

“You’re not even reading.”

“I am.” I kept my eyes on the page.

“You haven’t turned it in ten minutes.” Elena clicked her tongue and returned to the horse.

I lowered the book. “That thing has six legs.”

Her arm moved over the page. “No, it doesn’t.”

“I can see them.”

“Basta.” She threw the purple pencil at my chest.

I caught it and set it on the side table. My eyes moved to the clock without meaning to.

Nine thirty-six.

Elena noticed. “He’ll come home.”

“I know.”

She returned to her drawing. I looked back at the book, but the words became impossible to focus on once I knew she noticed.

Headlights swept across the windows a few minutes before ten. Relief came so quickly that I closed the book before I thought about it.

Elena pushed herself upright. “Papà?”

Then a second set of headlights crossed the room, followed by a third.

I went to the window. The rain blurred the drive, but not enough to hide how sharply the first car stopped. Two men got out before the engine switched off, and when the second car pulled in, I watched every door open without finding Papà.

Elena came beside me, still holding the purple pencil. “Maybe he’s in the last one.”

I didn’t answer because I hoped the same thing.

The third car stopped and Laurent climbed out, his shirt soaked across the shoulders and one hand wrapped around the opposite wrist while he spoke to a guard. I waited for another door to open even after I saw nobody else inside. Laurent and Papà left together that morning. Laurent came home alone.

The front door opened downstairs. Usually the men made noise when they came in late, complaining about the weather or shouting for coffee. That night, their voices stayed too low to make out.

We reached the staircase just as Mamma stepped out of the drawing room, still in her grey cardigan with her reading glasses loose in one hand.

“Tornate di sopra.”

Elena slowed beside me, but I didn’t. “Where’s Papà?”

Mamma looked past us.

Laurent entered the hall with his shirt open at the throat. A dark stain covered the cuff near his wrist, and I stared until I understood it was blood.

Mamma never looked at his sleeve. Her eyes stayed on his face, and something in her expression changed before he spoke. The glasses slipped from her fingers and landed on the carpet.

“No.”

Laurent stopped. “Sofia.”

She shook her head. “Non dirlo.”

I never saw Laurent hesitate around my mother. He argued with her, stole wine with Papà and once convinced Elena that limoncello cured hiccups. He belonged in the house almost as much as we did, yet that night he didn’t seem to know where to put his hands.

Elena pressed against my side. “Dov’è Papà?”

Laurent looked up at us. His eyes were red, and I waited for him to say Papà was delayed or already at the hospital. Laurent always knew what to say when something went wrong.

This time, he didn’t.

Mamma made a broken sound behind me, and Elena caught the back of my shirt in both fists. I understood before anyone said the words, because nobody did.

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Someone guided Elena and me into the sitting room beside Nonno’s study. I couldn’t remember who.

Elena sat pressed against my side, both hands twisted into my shirt. Every time footsteps came down the corridor, she lifted her head, then buried her face against my chest when nobody came through.

The study door stayed partly open. Papà once threatened to make me copy an entire Italian dictionary if he caught me eavesdropping, but that night nobody told me to move.

Nonno’s voice carried through the gap.

“What route did they take?”

Someone answered too quietly for me to hear.

“Who changed it?”

“No one. It was the standard path.”

“Then how were they waiting?”

A long silence followed before Laurent spoke. “They knew which car. They knew the formation.”

Another man said only six people knew the route.

“Six,” Nonno repeated. “And Damian.”

Elena’s fingers tightened in my shirt when she heard Papà’s name.

They talked about the meeting point and security. I stopped following the details once the words began to blur together.

A chair scraped across the floor. Elena flinched, and I ran my hand over her hair the way Papà did when she fell asleep in the car.

Nonno’s voice dropped lower. “That wasn’t chance.”

“No,” Laurent said.

“Someone gave them Damian.”

My hand stopped in Elena’s hair as another man spoke a few seconds later.

“He was sold out.”

I stared at the gap in the door. I knew what sold out meant when Mamma complained about football tickets, but listening to grown men speak about Papà as if somebody handed him over gave the words a different meaning.

Inside, Nonno started giving instructions about men he wanted found before morning. Laurent interrupted him.

“No. I’ll do it.”

Nonno answered too quietly for me to hear.

“I said I’ll do it.”

Laurent’s voice cracked on the last word. I never heard that sound from him before, and it frightened me more than Nonno shouting.

Elena lifted her face from my chest. “Julian?”

I looked down at her.

“Is Papà dead?”

I couldn’t say yes, but I couldn’t lie either, so I nodded.

She pressed her face back into my shirt and cried. I held her while the men next door talked about the person who gave Papà away, someone he trusted enough to know where he would be that night.

I understood that much.

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Nonno came out sometime after midnight. Elena slept with her head in my lap, one hand still holding the edge of my shirt.

He crouched in front of us and brushed a strand of hair away from her face. “You heard.”

I nodded. “What does sold out mean?”

His jaw tightened. “It means someone told those men where to find your father.”

“Someone Papà knew?”

“Yes.”

“Who?”

“We don’t know yet.”

Anger pushed through the fear. “How can you not know?”

“Because whoever did this wanted us looking in the wrong direction.” Nonno rested one hand on my shoulder. “We’ll find them, Julian.”

I believed him because Nonno spoke as though there was no other ending.

Laurent stepped out a few minutes later. He washed the blood from his hands, but a faint stain still marked his cuff. His eyes went straight to Elena.

“I’ll take her upstairs.”

I tightened my arm around her before I realised I was doing it.

Laurent stopped. “Just upstairs, Jules.”

Only Papà and Laurent called me that. Hearing it from him loosened something in my chest enough for me to let Elena go.

She stirred when he lifted her, then settled when he placed one hand over the back of her head. Papà carried her the same way in the car, and watching Laurent do it tightened my throat.

I followed him upstairs. Mamma stayed in her room. Elena asked for her once when Laurent laid her in bed, then settled again while he pulled the quilt over her shoulders.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

Laurent turned his head. “Your father?”

I nodded.

“Yes.”

I stared at the floor. “Was he scared?”

His expression changed. “No, Julian. He wasn’t.”

I didn’t know if he told me the truth or the answer he thought I needed. I wanted it to be true enough that I accepted it.

Laurent stood and rested one hand against the back of my neck. “You need to sleep.”

“I’m not tired.”

“I know.”

Downstairs, another car came through the gates while phones rang. I stood outside Elena’s room trying to understand how Papà could disappear in a single night while everything else continued to move.

Laurent finally let go and started toward the stairs.

“Are you leaving?”

He stopped and looked back at me. “No.”

“You’re staying?”

Something in his face softened. “Sì.”

He walked back and squeezed the back of my neck once. “I’m staying with you.”

I nodded because I didn’t trust my voice.

Laurent went downstairs, and I stayed outside Elena’s room until his footsteps disappeared below. Then I climbed onto the other side of her bed and lay down fully dressed, listening to the rain and the voices through the house.

Sometime before I fell asleep, I heard Laurent downstairs with Nonno.

He was still there.

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GLOSSARY

Papà — Dad / Father

Mamma — Mum / Mother

Nonno — Grandfather

Basta — Enough / Stop

Tornate di sopra — Go back upstairs

Non dirlo — Don’t say it

Dov’è Papà? — Where’s Dad?

Sì — Yes