As he stood in the Hargraves’ dining room, his only escape route now cut off, all Milton could think about was how the man standing before him might as well be a completely different person from the guy who was smiling and supportive in the café less than an hour ago. How wonderful would it be if that Isaiah was still in front of him, instead of the cold and calculated presence he had to deal with now.

“It’s unfortunate,” Isaiah sighed. “You’re no better at lying than you were at stalking me. I could have bought the story about you lacking a sense of personal achievement. It was convincing. In fact, it may well be true, but it’s not the reason why you’re doing this, is it?”

Milton just took a small step back, as if retreating.

“That story you made up about Milo had so many holes I stopped keeping track. It’s the kind of thing you cobble together when you really want to make someone seem bad and divert attention away from them. And your insistence on seeing my notes was too obvious. Because you wanted to see everything I knew about Milo, to make sure I didn’t find out whatever it is I’m not supposed to find out. How am I doing so far?” Isaiah asked.

Milton grabbed his head, his composure obviously bursting at the seams. “I didn’t want to do this!” he yowled desperately.

“And I believe you, Milton,” Isaiah said compassionately. “Because you have such a criminally low feeling of self-worth that you would probably go along with just about anything. You can only act when someone else gives you something to act upon.”

“So, I’m guessing, you knew the truth about Milo all along. When I came to HQ and you heard me talking to your boss, you were worried that my prying would bring it to light. You told your father, and he ordered you to keep an eye on me. He even gave you a nice, fabricated story you could tell me, just to convince me to drop the investigation. Too bad it was easy to see through.”

Nigel put the pan down when Milton started to cry. The guy couldn’t even do that with dignity: it was an ugly cry, his red, swollen face completely disfigured by helplessness and bathed in tears and mucus while he sniveled like a child. It was a sorry sight, seeing a grown man reduced to such a state, even if he had been trying to pull tricks on Isaiah.

Now that he was completely exposed, Milton was expecting for Isaiah to really sink his teeth in. He was taken by surprise when Isaiah approached him, placed a comforting hand on his shoulder and began to speak with a far gentler tone.

“I’m giving you a chance to turn this into something good,” he said. “If you tell me what you know, the thing that you’re trying to hide, you’ll genuinely help me with this case.”

“You’re just trying to convince me to tell you what you want to hear,” Milton replied in between sobs and sniffles.

“I’m not,” Isaiah replied. “I’m giving you a choice, and you can decide what you want to do. If you say ‘no’, you’ll be free to leave. I can’t say that we’ll be inviting you over for tea and cookies anytime soon, but there won’t be any consequences for you if you walk out. I’m not going to hurt you, I won’t talk to your boss, I won’t plot out some convoluted revenge – nothing like that.”

Milton looked into his face, utterly confounded by what he’d just heard.

“I can just… say no… and leave?” he repeated, trying to get his head around it.

“Absolutely,” Isaiah confirmed. “If you want to go, we won’t stop you.”

“How can you be so nice!?!” Milton said semi-frustrated as he began to bawl again.

“I ask myself the same thing maybe three times a day,” Nigel said with a chuckle.

It took a while, but Milton finally managed to calm down. Isaiah stepped away from him and stood to his side; Nigel came to join him. The hallway was now clear, the apartment door in plain sight. Milton looked at it in disbelief, then turned towards the two men. Isaiah just nodded with a barely visible smile.

“You decide,” he said.

A tempest was raging in Milton’s mind. As sad as it was, this was one of the few situations when he was truly given full control over his actions, and he simply didn’t know what to do with it. It seemed like a win-win situation at first, being able to walk away without having divulged what he knew – but then he would have to explain how and why he failed to that man and be berated and insulted for it for the millionth time. In fact, this would happen regardless of what he chose to do; it was an inevitability.

Milton’s eyes once again turned to Isaiah’s calm face.

If he was going to get chewed out either way, wouldn’t it make more sense to do something that at least felt right to him?

He took a deep breath and spoke up with the faintest voice imaginable.

“You’re right. My father put me up to this. He doesn’t want anyone to find out about the family’s shame. About what happened to his brother.”

“Just what did Milo do for your father to feel so embarrassed by him?” Isaiah asked.

“My uncle didn’t really do anything,” Milton replied. “He just had a different idea about how he should live his life, and my father could never accept that. He saw it as a disgrace to the family name.”

Isaiah suddenly had a moment of realization. He recalled that all too brief phone call with Ivor Bax from not long ago, where the man bitterly uttered a single sentence: “I have no brother.”

“Milo isn’t Milo anymore, is he?” Isaiah said. “He changed his name. And probably his last name too if he got married. That’s why I couldn’t find anything about him. And that’s probably why none of his classmates knew what happened to him. They had no idea who to look for.”

Milton just nodded.

“Can you tell me the name by which he goes these days?” Isaiah asked.

Milton seemed unsure for a moment, but then swallowed hard and let out a long sigh.

“Drew Nicholls,” he said with relief, as if the weight of a thousand stones was finally lifted from his shoulders.

After that emotionally charged afternoon when Milton revealed his secret, getting in touch with the person formerly known as Milo Bax was simple. Drew Nicholls was easy to track down in the phone book, and one incredibly pleasant call later Isaiah had arranged to meet her in her own home. It was in one of the quietest parts of Strona, a suburb really. The townsfolk called it Alsmel, a name derived from an old word for “green”. And it was apt: the houses, all adorably rustic and with gorgeous gardens, were nestled in a lush valley, with the steep hills overlooking the city rising in the distance. A taxi would only take you so far, unable to go down the cobblestone paths; Isaiah had to make the last part of the trip on foot.

He was not alone. Walking a few steps behind him was a visibly nervous Milton. Much to Isaiah’s surprise, he expressed the desire to tag along and visit his aunt, to which she agreed. It was not an easy thing for him to decide to do. Following the tear-filled confrontation at the Hargraves household, Isaiah had a long talk with Milton and found out a lot of details about his past. As it turns out, he had never actually seen Drew in his life. He was kept away from her by his father, who poisoned his mind with the notion that she was an embarrassment that needed to be swept under the rug and kept there. That Ivor Bax would be less humiliated by a drug-peddling sibling that died from an overdose than one who was alive and well but living a different life than the one expected of them told Isaiah everything he needed to know about the man.

For Milton, this meeting was a big deal. It meant reconnecting with a part of his family that he never knew, but also renouncing everything his father stood for and getting on his bad side. Isaiah was proud of him in a way – it was a difficult choice to make but Milton made it anyway, despite the consequences.

“This should be it,” Isaiah said, stopping in front of a tall wooden fence covered with ivy. On the door was an engraved number 15, and below it a small window that teased a breathtakingly beautiful garden full of spring flowers.

After exchanging a quick glance with Milton, Isaiah rang the bell.