Under the Shadows

38. Unveiling The Reclaimer

Elyne said nothing, but her chest tightened at the rawness in his tone. She knew that story all too well—the struggle to make ends meet, the quiet shame of wearing the same shoes for years until they were more hole than leather. Greaves glanced at her, a faint smile tugging at his lips.

"I can see it in you, too," he said softly. "The way you looked at that crystal vase in the corner when you walked in. Most people wouldn't have given it a second glance, but you did. Not because you liked it, but because you were calculating its worth. Only someone who's lived through scarcity learns to measure things that way."

Her stomach twisted at how easily he'd read her. She hated how vulnerable it made her feel, as though her past were written in bold letters across her skin.

Greaves continued, his voice gaining a faint edge. "I worked my way out. Studied like a man possessed, clawed my way through medical school. Everyone told me that becoming a doctor would fix everything, that it would lift me out of the gutter and into the life I'd dreamed of."

He paused, his hands tightening slightly around the mug of coffee in front of him. "And for a while, it did. I married, had a beautiful daughter. Thought I'd made it. But then she got sick." His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat, forcing himself to continue. "Rare condition. Expensive treatment. Our insurance provider said it wasn't covered, called it a 'pre-existing condition.'"

Elyne felt her breath hitch, her hands tightening around her mug. She didn't need him to finish; she already knew where the story was going.

"She didn't make it," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Six months of fighting, of trying to scrape together the money. Watching her fade away while the people who could've—who should've helped us shrugged and turned their backs."

A silence fell over the room, heavy and suffocating. Greaves's face hardened, his eyes dark with a pain that time hadn't dulled. "After that, nothing mattered. My wife left; she couldn't bear to look at me anymore. I was... empty. Lost. I tried to end it."

Elyne's chest ached as she watched him, her mind flashing to her own ghosts, the things she'd buried deep and tried to forget. She knew that kind of pain, the way it hollowed you out and left you a shell of who you used to be.

"That's how I met Dante," Greaves continued, his voice steadier now. "We were both at the same meeting for people who'd... tried and failed to end their lives. He was young, just a kid really, but there was a fire in him. A purpose. He reminded me of my daughter in some ways—so driven, so sure of what he wanted. I think we recognized something in each other—two broken people trying to make sense of the senseless."

Greaves leaned forward, his elbows resting on the table, his fingers laced together as he continued. "At first, it was just small things," he said, his voice quiet but steady. "Pain management. I gave him the medications he needed for his back, recommended exercises, treatments. Anything to make his life a little easier. He wouldn't let me do more than that. Stubborn kid." A faint, almost wistful smile tugged at his lips before it faded. "But then... we started talking."

Elyne remained silent, her gaze unwavering as she absorbed every word.

"Dante had this way of seeing the world," Greaves went on. "Not just its flaws, but its possibilities. He wasn't angry in the way most people are after loss—aimless, destructive. His anger was focused, like a blade honed to precision. He'd talk about the system, how it failed people like my daughter, like his mother. How it protected the rich and powerful while grinding everyone else into dust."

Elyne felt a familiar pang in her chest. She'd heard similar sentiments before, though never spoken with the same quiet conviction she sensed in Dante's words, relayed through Greaves.