AI The green neon sign of The Raven’s Nest pulsed a low, steady heartbeat against the Soho dusk. Rory pushed through the heavy oak door, the familiar hum of conversation and the clink of glasses washing over her like a warm tide. The scent of stale beer and expensive whiskey clung to the air, a comforting blanket after a day spent battling London traffic and indifferent clients. Her muscles ached from endless climbs to fourth-floor flats, her mind buzzing with the clipped orders and hurried thanks. She needed a moment to herself before climbing the stairs to her own flat above the bar.
The Raven’s Nest was dimly lit, the kind of place where shadows stretched long and secrets could be whispered without fear. Old maps, faded to sepia tones, covered the walls alongside black-and-white photographs of forgotten street scenes. Rory slipped onto a stool at the far end of the bar, a quiet corner usually left undisturbed.
“Long day, Rory?”
Silas. His voice was a low rumble, carrying the weight of age and unspoken knowledge. He stood opposite her, wiping down the polished wood with a practiced, almost meditative rhythm. His grey-streaked auburn hair and beard caught the dim light, framing a face etched with a lifetime of observation. His hazel eyes, normally keen and neutral, held a flicker of something she couldn’t quite place tonight . There was his usual slight limp as he moved, a phantom scar from some old injury, giving his authority a grounded, weary edge.
“You have no idea,” she muttered, pushing a loose strand of black hair from her face. It was shoulder-length, usually pin straight, but today it felt tangled and wiry. “The usual, please.”
He nodded, already reaching for the chilled lager glass. Their exchanges were always like this: brief, functional, circling the edges of a deeper acquaintance they never quite acknowledged. She rented his flat, ran deliveries for a friend, and sometimes came down for a drink. He was her landlord and the man who owned her local. That was the established narrative, clean and uncomplicated. It was safer that way.
He placed the glass before her, the cold condensation a welcome shock against her fingertips. She took a long, grateful swallow. The bitterness of the lager cut through the exhaustion, a small, temporary reprieve.
Silas leaned against the bar, not quite looking at her, but not quite looking away either . His silver signet ring, always on his right hand, gleamed briefly as he picked up a fresh glass to polish. "Busy day for Yu-Fei, then."
"Always," Rory replied, keeping her voice light. "People never stop wanting their prawn toast. Or their dumplings." She took another sip, letting her gaze drift over the bar, allowing the amber light to soften the edges of her world for a few precious minutes. She saw a familiar pattern in the grain of the wood, a scratch near the base of the mirror. Details. They tethered her to the present.
A silence settled between them, heavier than usual. It wasn’t uncomfortable, exactly, but it hummed with an unfamiliar tension . Rory, cool-headed by nature, felt a faint prickle on the back of her neck.
Silas cleared his throat. “Did you ever think you’d end up running deliveries for a Chinese takeaway? After… everything?”
The question caught her off guard. She stiffened, the glass halting halfway to her lips. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Her voice was sharper than she intended.
He finally turned to face her fully, his hazel eyes locking onto her bright blue ones. There was a directness in his gaze now, a quiet intensity that erased the familiar bar owner and replaced him with something else, someone older, more dangerous.
“It means,” he said, his voice dropping to a near whisper , “that the Rory Carter I know isn’t quite the Laila I once knew.”
The name hit her like a physical blow. Laila. It was a name she hadn’t heard, hadn’t thought about, in over a decade. A gasp caught in her throat, stealing her breath. Her hand trembled , sloshing beer over the rim of the glass and onto the polished bar. She quickly wiped it with her sleeve, the small crescent-shaped scar on her left wrist, usually hidden, briefly visible.
“I … I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she stammered, her heart hammering against her ribs . Her carefully constructed calm shattered , leaving her exposed.
A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched Silas’s lips, full of a deep, familiar sadness. “Of course you do, Laila. Or should I say, *Malphora *? I ’ve watched you since you arrived. Knew it was you within the first week. The way you carry yourself, even the slight curve of your smile when you think no one’s looking. And those eyes.” He tapped his own temple. "Old habits, you see."
Rory felt a cold dread crawl up her spine. Her past, buried under layers of new identity and forced smiles, had just been unearthed in this quiet Soho bar, by the very man she saw every day. She pushed the glass away, her appetite for beer long gone. "Who are you?" It wasn’t a question of his name, but of his role in *that * past.
Silas sighed, a sound heavy with regret. “I ’m an old fool who should have realized sooner, or perhaps, done more back then.” He rubbed his left knee, a familiar gesture that suddenly held a new meaning. “Your father, Brendan, was a brilliant man. And your mother, Jennifer, fierce. I knew them both.”
Brendan and Jennifer. Her parents. The shock was dizzying. Rory pushed off the stool, needing distance, needing air, but the bar, the familiar walls, suddenly felt restrictive, suffocating. “My parents are dead,” she said, her voice flat, devoid of emotion, a practiced defence .
“They are,” Silas agreed, his tone sombre. “A consequence of the world they lived in. The world *I * lived in. The things they tried to uncover…” He trailed off, his gaze distant, lost in a landscape only he could see.
“What are you talking about?” Rory demanded, her bright blue eyes blazing with a mix of fear and anger. “They died in a car accident. In Cardiff. When I was ten.”
Silas finally met her gaze again, and the regret in his eyes was almost unbearable. “That’s the official story. The convenient one. For you. For everyone. To keep you safe.” He paused, weighing his words, then continued, his voice softer, almost a plea. “Their work, Laila, it put them in danger. And by extension, it put you there too. I was… tangentially involved. An operative, trying to keep assets secure. I was too slow. Too focused on the bigger picture to see the cracks forming right under my nose.”
Rory felt a cold tremor run through her. The car crash, the grief, the years in foster care, then the escape from Evan, the new life in London – it all suddenly clicked into a terrifying mosaic , a shadow play where Silas, the quiet bar owner, had been a hidden puppet master, or perhaps, a ghost from the wings.
“You watched me,” she whispered, her voice barely audible . “All these years? You knew it was an accident? You knew about Evan?” The thought that her subsequent life was also known, observed, dissected, was horrifying.
Silas winced. “I lost track of you after you went into the system. Tried to find you, but you were well-hidden. It was only when Yu-Fei mentioned her new delivery driver, a young woman from Cardiff with an unusual history, and your name… Aurora Carter. It rang a bell. Then I saw you.” He gestured vaguely around the bar. “You moved into my building, Laila. Fate, irony. Call it what you will. And yes, Evan. I know about him too. My contacts are still useful.”
Rory sank back onto the stool, her mind reeling. The coolness she’d cultivated, the intelligence, the quick thinking — it was all a shield. And now, that shield lay in pieces. “You… you let me walk into this bar, night after night, for months, knowing who I was? Knowing what happened?”
“What was I to do?” Silas asked, his voice low and earnest . “Shatter the fragile peace you’d built? Remind you of a past I was partly responsible for? How do you tell someone you knew their parents, that their deaths weren’t an accident, that you had a hand in not preventing it? You were just a child, Laila. What could I have offered you then, or now, that wouldn’t have just brought more pain?” He looked away, his gaze falling on an old photograph of Tower Bridge . “I failed them. I failed you. Building a life for yourself here, away from all that , seemed the best outcome I could hope for. To simply be… Silas. Your landlord. Quietly looking out for you, in my own way.”
The silence that followed stretched, thick and heavy, punctuated only by the distant murmur of other patrons. Rory stared at her hands, the small scar on her wrist a stark reminder of another childhood injury, another lie, perhaps. She thought of her parents, a barrister and a teacher, loving and ordinary. That ordinary life had been a fiction. She was, and had always been, Laila, or Malphora , or whatever name Silas had known from a shadowy world of danger and secrets. Rory Carter, the cool-headed woman who’d fled Cardiff, was just the latest iteration.
“So you’ve been watching me,” she said finally, her voice flat . “Playing the kindly old landlord.”
Silas met her gaze, no longer apologetic, but firm. “I ’ve been trying to make amends, in the only way I knew how. To give you the safety and normalcy you deserved. You’ve changed, Laila. You’re harder now, colder. But still sharp. Still resilient. You were a bright, vibrant child. Full of life. They would have been proud of the woman you’ve become, even with the scars.”
The compliment, framed in such a bleak truth, twisted something inside her. She *had * changed. The trauma of Evan, the daily struggle of her new life, it had all chiselled away at her. But maybe the real chiselling had begun even earlier, with a lie about a car crash, with a past she hadn't known she had .
“What exactly happened?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper .
Silas ran a hand over his beard, his eyes filled with the weight of years. “That, Laila, is a story for another time. Perhaps when you’re ready to hear it. Perhaps when you’re willing to forgive an old man for his mistakes. All I can offer now is this: you’re safe here. Safer than you’ve ever been. And I ’ll make sure it stays that way.”
Rory looked at him, truly looked at him, for the first time since that name had shattered her world. The quiet authority, the subtle limp, the observant hazel eyes – they no longer belonged to just her landlord. They belonged to a man intertwined with her past, a man who bore the same heavy burden of unspoken regret that she suddenly found herself carrying. The unexpected meeting had not been the physical arrival of a stranger, but the shattering emergence of a past long buried, a past that had never truly left, simply waited patiently in the discerning gaze of an old friend.
She picked up her glass, the lager now lukewarm, and took another sip. The bitterness had never tasted so profound . “Rory,” she corrected him, her voice quiet but firm. “My name is Rory.”
Silas nodded, a silent acknowledgment of her choice, her current identity, even as his eyes held the shadow of Laila. The tension remained, but a new stratum had been added to the air between them, thin and fragile, but undeniably present. The unspoken regret had finally been given breath. The weight of time, so often just a gentle current, had abruptly turned into a tidal wave.