The Oath We Give (The Hollow Boys Book 5)

Silas

People constantly battle two versions of themselves. 

The individual they give to the world, the person that exists in public for eyes to view and the versions they hide, the person they are when no one is watching.

This isn’t a bad thing, just a fact. We all have it. 

My eyes follow the head of pin-straight brown hair across the busy Ponderosa Springs main street, the security camera’s resolution dulling the paint splatters across her white T-shirt. 

Several men make an effort to look at her, either glancing over their shoulder or stopping in their tracks completely.

I wonder if she notices. 

The attention men give her. 

How they can’t seem to help themselves when she’s around. Compelled to stare. Admire. It’s not beauty that keeps their attention—a lot of women are beautiful. There is something else, something unexplainable about her allure. 

I wonder if that’s where her nickname came from. Far before Stephen Sinclair shouted them at me. It was a question I’d wanted to know since she flew out of that house of horrors with shredded wings. 

Like clockwork, she heads into the studio at noon, just as she always does, and soon, she fades from my view. Twenty minutes—I see her nearly every day for twenty minutes across my screen, and every time, I ask myself the same two questions. 

What version of her did I see the night she called me? And what makes Coraline Whittaker cursed?

Spying on people through public traffic cameras is both illegal and morally ambiguous. I’m not saying what I do is right. I am saying I could be much worse if I wanted to. I mean, technically? I could hack just about every camera she passes by on a regular basis, but that feels too far, even for someone like me.

I’m a killer, but I was also raised to respect women’s boundaries. 

We aren’t friends, Coraline and I. I don’t owe her my concern. However, I know what she sounds like when she is scared. I felt her fear through that phone, and no one deserves to be afraid like that. 

So although the girl on the screen is practically a stranger to me and I’m simply a voice she heard long ago, I just want to make sure she’s alright. It’s sort of a comfort to watch those twenty minutes of her day, background noise to fill the void for a little while. 

“Silas! You still there?” 

I blink, pulling my eyes from my computer and picking up my phone from the desk, taking it off speakerphone and holding it to my ear. 

“Yeah,” I mutter, clearing my throat. 

“What did you get from the email?”

My jaw twitches with annoyance. Not at Alistair, just at the situation. I’m not sure what irritates me more, the fact we’re being blackmailed or that the person doing it is good. A black hat and fucking code jockey.

Yesterday, I’d received another email, this time no video, just another ominous sentence. 

Don’t make me bring home to you. 

No signature or name. Just that fucking video, evidence that could send all of us to prison if it’s released. All we’ve worked for, what we’ve escaped? It would be ruined with one press leak. 

I can feel my headache returning, or maybe it never left.

“No,” I sigh. “They transmitted it with distributed relays. There are too many nodes, and it’s going to take me a minute to get back to the original sender. Whoever sent it either paid a lot of money for anonymity or is much better than me.” 

For my ego, I’m going to say the former. 

“I’m going to pretend I know what the fuck you just said,” Alistair grunts, dull buzzing in the background. Tattoo machines working overtime—that’s why he wanted to wait for this phone call. He didn’t want to be home, knowing Briar would be too nosey for her own good and found out about this before we had a plan in motion. 

“I can’t trace their location yet,” I say plainly.

I’d tried sending malware in my response to the email, but it’s been left unopened, which is great for the sender, but it leaves me with a long list of trails to follow that’s going to take me a few weeks, if I can even find a back door.

Two fucking years. 

That’s all we could get? That’s all the peace I got? 

Fuck this town and its inability to let anyone make it out alive. I’m sure, now more than ever, it isn’t going to stop until it buries all four of us beneath it. 

I run a frustrated hand down my face, more upset for Rook and Alistair than anything else. Thatcher and I still live here, him by choice and me out of obligation. But up to this point, we’d been able to just exist quietly. 

We’d gotten too comfortable in our new lives, our roles. Tried to move on and forget, build lives for ourselves that weren’t tainted with darkness, desperately trying to erase the black mark this place imprinted on us. 

But there are some things we can never let go of. 

Things that refuse to let go of us. 

“Rook is positive it’s the coked-out daddy’s boy out for revenge. His last name took quite a hit when Stephen was arrested.” 

I snort. “Easton Sinclair may have majored in computer science, but he isn’t better than me. If a tree fell over in Japan, Rook would blame it on him.” 

Alistair lets out a choked laugh, and it’s a nice sound to hear. His laughter. I don’t remember us ever being the type of kids who laughed, but Alistair never did, and now it feels like he does it more. 

That familiar feeling of guilt begins to settle in me, digging into the pit of my stomach and burrowing there. They’ll never say it, but I’m the reason for this. The lives they’ve tried to start? Ruined because of me. Because of my unhinged, desperate need for revenge. 

Vengeance for Rosemary started with the guilt of not being there when she needed me most, and now my friends’ futures are in danger, leaving me exactly where I once started. 

“He could’ve hired someone—”

Two loud knocks echo in the walls of my office. I lean up in my chair a bit, trying to compartmentalize the pieces of my life. The part of me that has to deal with my past and the version that’s trying to work toward some semblance of a future. 

“I have to go.” 

“This is the last time, Silas,” Alistair says, conviction in his voice. “This is the last time I come back to that fucking place. Even if it kills me.” 

He means it. Every word. If we don’t get this figured out and clear our slate this time around, he’ll die before this place keeps him here. I’m almost jealous that he has the ability to leave, that he can be whoever he wants in Seattle, a new Alistair that no one knows. 

There are no rumors or whispers. Just him existing. 

I have never once known what that feels like. To simply exist without someone having a preconceived idea of who I am. 

I nod, even though he can’t see it. “Heard.” 

When the line goes dead, I tell whoever is on the other side of the door to come in, silently praying that it isn’t fucking Ted from finance. That guy gives me fucking hives. 

My prayers must be getting through to someone because my father opens the door, wearing his tailored suit, his head held impossibly high. In this light, it’s hard to even imagine him faltering, let alone going through something as debilitating as chemo. 

His steps are measured as he walks across the room, dress shoes clicking across the floor, and I suddenly wish I could jump out of one of the floor-to-ceiling glass windows behind me. 

Scott Hawthorne is sporting his infamous stone-wall face, the one he used to give Caleb and Levi when they skipped school or broke one of Mom’s vases. I’ve never been on the receiving end of one until this very moment. 

“Son, we need to talk.” 

No shit. 

I lean back as he sets himself into the leather chair in front of my desk, various papers scattered across the surface that I catch him scanning before he looks up at me. 

A cough pulls from his lungs, and he takes a moment to cover his mouth with his hand. 

“Do I need to call someone?” I ask, hand already reaching for my phone. 

“No.” He waves me off, eyebrows pulled together as he catches his breath. “I’m fine.” 

Giving him a second to regain his steely composure, I lean back into my chair, folding my arms in front of my chest. 

“Your mother and I didn’t think this would be an issue, seeing as you weren’t supposed to take the reins this quickly.” He uses his thumb and pointer finger to wipe his mouth, releasing a heavy breath. “But unfortunately, the board isn’t willing to budge.” 

“On?” 

The vote for me taking over isn’t scheduled for months, and I’ve already secured the majority. There is no one else that can take this position—I’m the eldest Hawthorne, and the board has never deviated from that tradition. 

Another wave of guilt hits me. Did I do something wrong? I may not love this job, but I like it enough to fight for it. For my father’s sake, at the very least. 

“In order to take over as CEO of Hawthorne Technology, you have to be married.” 

Since my incorrect diagnosis of schizophrenia, I’d learned quickly how to school my facial expressions, keeping everything I feel or experience below the surface of a monotone face. 

It’s always been easier this way, keeping the truth to myself, keeping what I feel inside. But right now, I’m sure the shock I’m experiencing is evident in my features. 

Married? 

“What fucking year is this?” I find myself asking. 

I have always known how strict the board residing over the company is, how disciplined they have been in the past, but this? 

“I know, it’s archaic.” He presses a palm to his forehead. “But your great-great-grandfather put the stipulation into place, and they’ve never wavered from it. I have tried reasoning with them, given the circumstances, but they aren’t changing their minds.” 

I actually want to laugh at the sick joke the universe has decided to play on me. I’m the never-ending punchline, apparently. I give and give, yet all it wants to do is take. 

I gave my voice in exchange for silence. Gave it my peace in exchange for acceptance. And now? The one thing I never, ever wanted to do again, and it’s forcing me? 

Fuck off.

“Silas.” My father says my name with a deep sadness in his voice, and I focus my eyes on his. “This is not what I wanted for you. Not ever. I thought you would have plenty of time, that I would have more time. This was—” 

“I know,” I tell him, because I do.

The only thing either of my parents has ever wanted for me was happiness. That’s all they ever requested from any of their children. 

I press my finger into my eye sockets, willing this headache to disappear and thinking of all the techniques Jennifer taught me in therapy when it comes to handling stress. 

But this stress? All of it? Seems a little too much for anyone to handle.

“I’ll figure it out,” I say numbly, not knowing how I’ll be dealing with it but knowing I will. “How long do I have?” 

If I could just have enough time to destroy that video, I could worry about finding a wife later. One that’s okay with living in separate homes and signing a prenup. People have wealthy arranged marriages all the time; it’s not taboo. I’ll just have to go through the process of finding someone.

“That’s the thing. I don’t want you to.” 

I snap my head up, lifting an eyebrow. 

“We are discussing selling Hawthorne Tech. There are a lot of investors—” 

“No,” I bite out, more anger in my voice than I’d like to use with my father. “You worked for this company. Our family worked for it, and it won’t be ruined because of me.” 

I can’t—

I won’t have anything else be destroyed because of me. This can’t fall apart. I won’t let it.

My heart rate speeds up, an overwhelming amount of pressure slamming into my skull with a sledgehammer. My father is dying—do I even have the time to prepare for that now? There is a cyber villain threatening the freedom of my friends, and now I have to get married.

I feel my mind begin to crawl toward a dark place, creeping with broken arms toward a pit I barely pulled myself out of the first time. The ocean roars in my ears, and the room seems to tilt.

I’m losing control, can feel it slipping right through my tightened fingers. If I can’t control my life, how can I keep control of my mind?

“You deserve to marry for love, Silas,” he says with a gentle ease. “For happiness and for joy. Not on a whim, not in a forced setting. I want you to know the happiness of family.” 

“Dad,” I choke out, struggling to breathe.

He’s dying, giving up his company because of me.

My friends are in trouble because of me.

Rosemary died because of me.

It’s all my fault. All of it.

“This isn’t up for debate, Silas. I’ve already made a plan to present to the board. Your mother has already agreed—”

Static buzzes in my brain as I tumble toward the darkness, clawing and grappling for anything to hold on to so that the evil inside of me doesn’t swallow me whole.

I’m sure on the outside, I look fully composed and put together. He can’t see what’s happening in my mind—no one can. I’m searching for a way to save this.

Your fault. All of this is your fault.

My chest burns, words I want to say right there on my tongue, ready to beg and apologize. To scream at the world that I tried, it isn’t my fault.

Don’t…

Don’t blame me.

My hand snags a branch in my mind, clutching onto it for dear life as I dangle right over the pool of helplessness. Creatures snap their teeth, hungry for me.

On a whim, with no other choice, I lie to my father for the very first time.

“I have a girlfriend.”