Aiden meets me at a nondescript billiards bar on the West Side Highway of Manhattan, wearing a navy ball cap in contrast to my black one.

I take off my shades as I slide into the booth opposite him, because sometimes, that’s all you need in this city to be incognito—a ball cap and shades. In the celebrity realm, anyway. I’m not too familiar with maintaining a camouflage under witness protection these days.

“Coffee?” Aiden asks as he pretends deep interest in his newspaper. The paper contains fingerprints and grease marks like it’s been read by a few patrons before him.

I nod, and he signals the server for two more of what he’s having. What I really want is a beer, but considering what we’re talking about, I’d better stick with nonalcoholic stimulants.

Aiden leans back against the blue, torn vinyl in the low-lit room as the server lays down a mug for me, and pours from a carafe into mine and Aiden’s empty one.

“So,” Aiden says once she departs. “Tell me what you couldn’t over the phone.”

I tell him everything. From the law firm representing these two psychos that killed my parents, to the attorneys representing them, to Astor. That gorgeous, flawed woman I thought had a soft spot for me, despite wounding her so badly years ago, who only turned around and bit the hand that stroked her.

Aiden nods along, saying nothing, staring at the woodgrain of our table or his grease-bitten paper, contemplating the universe as I detail this morning’s confrontation at Locke’s gym.

“Huh,” he says once I finish, his shoulders falling back against the vinyl again.

“That’s it?” I say. “I tell you I may have to give up everything, all I’ve worked for, and get a new name in a new city, and all you can do is grunt?”

Aiden laughs.

“Dude,” I say. “What the fuck?”

Aiden puts a hand to his chest, as if trying to contain his mirth. For the first time in more than eight years of knowing him, I want to punch the guy.

“We’re not in a movie here, Ben. You don’t have to assume a new identity and start again somewhere else.”

I splay out my hands. “But this firm, these guys at Costello and whatever, know who I am.”

“And they will have the DOJ snarling down their throats so fast they’ll lose their tongues, never mind their attorney licenses, if they so much as breathe a word of your identity to their wives, partners, children…you get the idea.”

“I don’t feel safe anymore, Aiden,” I say. “I gotta be honest.”

“Look, WITSEC was created specifically for trials. To protect key witnesses in high-profile cases, or prosecutions where the defendants are extremely dangerous. The fact they want you to testify at trial, that’s exactly where we come in. We can protect your identity all the way.”

“But I don’t want to testify.”

“And you don’t have to. In which case, we’ll slap a court order in their faces so fast they’ll get whiplash. Everything they found out about you must be redacted or deleted.”

“But my new identity—me, Ben—I’m high profile. I’m a pro-footballer. This kind of information…”

Aiden grows serious. “I’ll admit, you’re not the typical guy we protect. Usually, it’s fellow criminals that get a new identity and hide, not a baby boy who’s grown into a successful, famous adult. Is there a risk you could still be discovered? Yes, I’m not going to lie. But here are the facts as I see ‘em.” Aiden rests his elbows on the table. “You don’t want to testify. You don’t know anything relevant to that night that could help identify these men. You are doing nothing to hinder this prosecution, and on the flip side, you’re doing nothing to help them, either. So, if I were a bad guy?” Aiden shrugs. “What the fuck do I want with you at this point?”

I sit back and take a deep, cleansing breath—the kind of breath this one trainer I had who was super into meditation made me do. I’m starting to regret firing him. “So, you’re telling me, all this stress, all this bone-chilling terror I’ve been feeling about my family and friends, about giving up my life to protect theirs, is most likely for nothing?”

“It’s never for null,” Aiden says, gentler. “We didn’t put you into WITSEC because we felt like it. It was because back then, there was a very real risk posed to you. You were meant to perish with your parents in that house, and you didn’t. You were also old enough to maybe have some kind of recollection in the future on who was supposed to kill you. When you were sixteen and I told you the truth—that was serious. Chavez was poking around, noticing holes in that case, and was making noises about wanting to protect his people. We almost moved you. There is always a risk, Ben. If you stay Ben Donahue, if you don’t and become someone else, there is always a goddamned risk to your life. I’m sorry, but it’s true.”

I nod, close my eyes, and rub them.

“You’ve been Benjamin Abraham Donahue for twenty years. I would rather you stay in this world, the one you love and belong in, then have to start over somewhere else, only to potentially reach the same outcome,” Aiden continues. “But, of course, it’s up to you.”

I lock my jaw and stare out the filmed-over window. Aiden doesn’t push for me to speak. After a while, I say, “I want to stay Ben.”

Aiden sips the last of his coffee and sets it down. “Then you do that.”

I slump against my seat. Just because it’s the best decision, doesn’t mean me and mine are safe.

Aiden stands and throws a few bills on the table.

“Think on it for a while,” he says, laying a hand on my shoulder. “I’ve been keeping my ear on this case, and it seems like these guys might take a plea. Then, it’ll be over.”

“It’s never over,” I mumble, but I don’t think he hears, because he walks away.

Aiden is not my friend. He’s been a strong advocate of mine, a fierce protector over the years, but in the end, he’s a professional U.S. Marshal who has to keep the little boy he saved at an emotionless arm’s length. I understand all that, but more than anything, I wish there was someone else I could talk to, be so completely open and honest with, and get their warmth as well as opinion.

Astor’s form takes ghostly shape across the table, her naturally wide, blue eyes pinned against mine as I talk it out in my head, unleash all my worries, my fears, and ask her if I’m making the right moves.

Astor’d give it to me straight. Just like she did last night when she listened. If I had her here now, I’d stand up, lift her with me, and kiss her ghost breathless.

The betrayal from this morning, however, makes her imaginary lips taste like snake venom.

I curl my upper lip and signal for a beer.

Part of me doesn’t believe Astor would email her discovery to her peers, but most of me does. Astor’s hard to read, but when it comes to the source of the wounds behind her scar tissue, she’ll avenge them at any cost.

As far as she’s concerned, I openly betrayed her years ago and never paid penance for it. Then she lost her mother, a tragedy so out of her control she raged at the world in general. Her father ignores her, despite her financial independence. Her brother’s found happiness, despite living like a pauper.

In Astor’s universe, nothing seems fair. Anybody else would look at her and think she’s a bitter, lonely woman out for scorn and revenge, preferably both at the same time.

“Until this morning, I saw through all that,” I say to no one. I tap the fingers of my throwing hand on the wood varnish, an anxious twitch I’m trying to get rid of.

The server sets down my draught beer, and as the golden liquid swishes against the frosted glass, foam settling along the edges, the pint blurs into two, my tapping finger becomes four, and the wood varnish morphs into the pale, cheap bamboo table of my childhood—

Apple juice.

“Finish your sippy cup, love,” Mom says as she rounds my chair. “Your last snack before bedtime.”

“But I don’t wanna.”

“Well, ya hafta.” She lays a wet kiss on my cheek, squeezing my shoulders until it tickles and she gets a giggle out of me.

“Then I get a story,” I say through my laughter.

“Of course. One story.”

“Two.”

“No bargaining tonight, son,” my dad cuts in. He shuts off the TV In the den and comes over. “Daddy’s got an important meeting tonight. No kids allowed.”

“But I’m a great kid,” I say.

“That you are.” He tousles my hair as he passes, goes to the fridge, and bends into it to find a beer. His muffled voice continues, “But it’s boring big boy talk. Actually…”

Dad straightens and shuts the fridge, brown bottle in hand.

“Rose, that might be just the thing to get him to sleep. Have him stay up and listen to all the crap these guys have to say. Ry’ll be asleep in seconds.”

“Don’t say crap,” Mom admonishes him.

“CRAP!” I scream.

I get a gentle thwack across the side of the head for that one.

“He’s having enough nightmares already,” Mom says above my head, as if I can’t hear. “Having strange men come around and sit in this living room, talking about things he can’t understand…Lord knows what kind of night terrors that’ll bring him.”

Dad shrugs. “It was a thought. But read the same story to him five times over instead, then.”

Mom chuckles, pushes Dad playfully when he walks by, then lays a peck on his cheek.

“Come on, honey,” she says to me. “Time for bed.”

“But noooooo.”

“But yes.”

“I wanna meet Daddy’s friends.”

“Another time. C’mon.”

Mom lifts me and I curl my limbs around her soft body, always warm, always fragrant from soap. I cling to her neck as she hums a tune down the short hallway, and drops me off in bed.

My favorite story, Green Eggs and Ham, is ready on my nightstand, next to my emergency nighttime sippy cup of more apple juice, in case I wake up and need comfort, instead of running to Mom.

Mom reads to me, and I chatter along with the parts that I know, pointing and laughing. In the middle of round two of the book (because I always win), my eyelids go heavy.

Last thing I remember is Mom’s lips pressing against my cheek, and she rubs the spot with her fingers when the scent of her drifts away. “Night night, Ry-Ry…”

Peace. Until…

STOMP.

BANG.

Breaking glass.

My eyes snap open in the dim light, my Slimer from Ghostbusters nightlight lending small clarity. I blink, rising on my elbows, the sounds of my parents’ voices hitting my ears.

“Please! We didn’t—” CRACK.

“Oh! Oh, God, Tim, no! What did you do to him? What—?”

“Shut up,” an unfamiliar, male voice says. “Just shut the fuck up.”

“Let’s do her,” someone else says.

“In a minute. We need to talk to this guy first, and something tells me knocking his woman around, maybe fucking her in front of him, will get him to talk.”

“Please! Leave her alone. Let her go, I’ll tell you everything—”

I creep out of bed, towards the door and the shaft of light underneath. Carefully—because something inside me is saying to be careful—I turn the knob and peer around the frame.

My mom’s back is to me, her floral dress stained with red splatters. She’s on the ground, held by the hair by a tall, thin man, dressed in a black coat and dark jeans. If he has red splatters, too, I don’t see them.

Mom’s crying, her shoulders shaking. Dad doesn’t sound like Dad. His voice is much higher, and crackles, and I think it’s the sound of sobbing.

Sippy cup. I need my emergency apple juice, because I don’t feel very safe anymore.

I turn back to my room, and as I do, the floorboard creaks under my foot.

The man holding my mom snaps his head around.

Sees me.

“Well, lookie here,” he says, his pale grey eyes taking in the sight of me and my race car pajamas. “Hey, Lopez. We have an unexpected guest.”

I whimper.

Wishing for my sippy cup.

Wishing for my mom.

Gasping, I slam my palms against the edge of the table.

“Sir?” The server rushes over, takes one look at me, and takes a step back. “Goodness, do you need an ambulance? Are you choking?”

Those questions should really be asked in reverse, but I don’t have the voice to tell her so. I do everything I can to calm my breathing and blink away the sweat dripping into my vision. Clutching the table, I center back to the present, to the bar I’m in, to the memory of Aiden across from me, and internally chant that I’m not that child anymore.

Ben never saw the carnage.

Ben wouldn’t remember.

“Oh, shit. Oh, God,” I think I sob out, before bowing my head and exhaling hard into my chest.

Ryan remembers.