Three Months After

The news breaks in the middle of the afternoon, when the city is loud with traffic and people are pretending the world is normal.

Edward Smith’s face floods every screen.

Cole is in the library when it happens—half-asleep over a textbook he hasn’t really been reading, coffee gone cold at his elbow. Someone nearby gasps. Another whispers a name. A phone volume jumps too loud, the anchor’s voice crisp and merciless.

—arrested earlier this morning on charges of large-scale money laundering and human trafficking—

Cole looks up.

At first, he doesn’t recognize the man on the screen. The angle is wrong. The lighting is unforgiving. His father’s...