33. Shiloh
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SHILOH
For one breath, no one moves.
Delia stands in the aisle beside Reva, spine straight, chin lifted, voice still hanging in the incense-thick air.
It’s time for La Rosa to change hands.
The church seems to understand the words before the rest of us do.
Candles flicker near the icons. Smoke drifts beneath painted saints with gold around their heads and grief carved into their eyes.
Somewhere near the vestibule, one of the Volkov men shifts his weight, and the soft scrape of his shoe against stone sounds obscene in the silence.
I’ve seen a lot of rooms turn.
Poker rooms. Back rooms. Bedrooms. Alleyways. The main floor of Noir when a man realizes too late that he mistook entertainment for permission.
This is different. This is a church full of predators watching an old queen discover she’s run out of loyal hands.
Isabel doesn’t look at the men who have failed to move for her.
She looks at her granddaughters.
Reva is closest to me, though still too far.
I can see the hard line of her shoulders from where I stand one pew back and to the side, near Ever.
Deacon is a shadow behind the girls, gun hidden under his jacket, body angled toward every person who might become a problem.
Nash stands near the end of the pew with one hand loose at his side, face so calm I know every violent thing in him has gone quiet enough to hear.
Marisol steps into the aisle. Her black veil is pushed back from her face now.
That choice is deliberate. Dangerous. A daughter letting every person in this church see exactly who is standing against her mother.
Isabel’s mouth tightens.
“Move, Marisol.”
Marisol ignores the command.
I didn’t expect steel from her the first time I saw her in the hospital chapel, grief-stripped and shaking from Reva’s pain.
I should have, though. Women don’t survive Isabel by staying soft all the way through. They don’t survive anything by being soft. Women are some of the strongest fucking creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around.
“You have a choice,” Marisol says.
Her voice is quiet, but the church carries it.
Isabel’s head tilts. “Do I?”
“Yes.”
Reva cuts a quick look toward her mother. I catch it because I’ve become fluent in Reva’s face. That look says this was not the phrasing we agreed upon, and also, please do not volunteer me for organized crime before breakfast.
In almost any other setting, I might laugh.
Mari—we’ve all started calling her Mari—sees the look too. Something almost apologetic touches her mouth before she turns back to Isabel.
“You can retire,” Marisol says. “Publicly. Gracefully. You can transition La Rosa into your granddaughters’ hands without bloodshed.”
Reva’s eyes narrow harder. Delia doesn’t move.
Interesting.
She knew Mari would say it that way. Or she understands why. Granddaughters, plural, sounds stronger to the room. Blood on both sides of the aisle. The heir Isabel shaped and the ghost she failed to kill. One trained. One mythic. Together, they’re harder to dismiss.
Reva has no interest in ruling a cartel.
But Reva also has a gift for becoming the most useful weapon in a room by accident.
Isabel looks from Delia to Reva, then to Marisol. Then she scoffs. It’s a small sound.
It’s a fatal sound.
“I have no granddaughters.”
The words hit the room like a slap. Reva’s body goes very still. Delia’s smile thins until it barely looks human.
Marisol absorbs it differently. Her face loses color, but she doesn’t step back. She looks at the woman who birthed her, raised her, trapped her, and taught her daughters that love had to crawl beneath doors to survive.
“That’s a ridiculous statement,” she says.
“No.” Isabel’s voice sharpens, silk tearing at the edge. “I have—had—a daughter who disappointed me, one girl who might have been useful, and one mistake who should have died before she learned to make scenes in churches.”
Ever makes a low sound beside me. My hand starts to rise.
I don’t know what I mean to do with it. Catch Reva if she lunges. Reach for the gun beneath my jacket. Put myself between her and the old woman before Isabel finds the exact word that cuts deepest.
All of the above, probably.
I’m a man of many talents and poor impulse control where Reva is concerned.
Isabel’s gaze lands on Reva. “There is still time to correct that.”
The air leaves my lungs around the same moment Nash takes a single step. Deacon’s hand slides beneath his jacket.
Delia turns her body slightly, placing herself half in front of Reva, and that is when I see the gun in her hand. Low at her side. Small. Matte black. Hidden until now by her coat and the line of her body.
Isabel sees it too. Her eyes flick down. Then up.
“Delia,” Marisol says softly.
A warning. A plea. Maybe both.
Delia doesn’t look away from Isabel. “You should have retired when you had the opportunity, old woman.”
Isabel laughs again, uglier this time. “Thinking you could force my hand in this manner. In this place. With Russians watching and whores’ sons standing guard.” Her gaze skims Nash, Ever, Deacon, then me. “You mistake borrowed men for power.”
“Borrowed?” Reva asks.
One word. Quiet enough that it has no business crawling under my skin. It does anyway.
Isabel smiles at her. “Yes, child. Borrowed. Men like that return to whatever keeps them fed. Yours will tire of guarding a wound.”
I step forward before I think better of it. Ever’s hand clamps around my forearm. Smart man but super fucking annoying sometimes.
Reva doesn’t turn her head. “You don’t know them.”
“I know men.” Isabel’s gaze slides to Marisol. “Your mother knew men too. Frank. Cal. Such sentimental creatures, both of them. Cal more than most. I will deal with him when this embarrassment is finished.”
That is the moment. I feel it happen before it happens.
The room tightens. Reva’s breath stops. Delia’s fingers flex around the gun. Marisol’s face collapses around fear and fury so old it should have turned to stone by now. Deacon’s eyes go black.
Isabel reaches for Delia’s gun. My mind goes blank and then focuses on a single thought.
What the hell does this old bat think she’s going to accomplish with that move?
She is close, I’ll give her that. Faster than a woman her age should be. One gloved hand snaps out and clamps around Delia’s wrist, trying to twist the weapon up and away. Delia reacts, but her knees are still damaged, her balance compromised for one fatal sliver of time.
The whole church explodes into motion.
My hand is already moving beneath my jacket.
Ever reaches too, faster than me because Ever is built out of competence and grim thoughts.
From the edge of my vision, Deacon closes the distance with murder in every line of his body.
Nash steps toward Reva, not Isabel, because Nash sees the board faster than the rest of us.
All of us move.
None of us reach them in time.
BANG.
The shot cracks through the church so loud it seems to hit the icons first.
Isabel jerks.
For one suspended second, she remains upright, hand still on Delia’s wrist, eyes wide with insult more than fear. Then blood spreads across the front of her black dress, bright and obscene against the fabric.
She crumples to the stone floor, scarlet blooming beneath her like a flower.
I whirl. Reva stands in the aisle with both hands on a gun I didn’t know she had.
Her face is blank. Too blank.
Ever is already moving beside me. “Reva got her.”
The gun drops from Reva’s fingers.
“Reva—”
It hits the stone and fires again.
The second shot punches into a pew with a crack that makes half the room shout and duck. Wood splinters. A woman screams. Someone swears in Russian. I throw myself toward Reva as Ever reaches her first.
He kicks the gun away and wraps both arms around her from behind, lifting her off balance before her knees can fold. She doesn’t fight him. Her hands hang empty in front of her, fingers curved like they still remember the weapon.
Delia stands frozen two feet away, Isabel’s blood on one sleeve and her own gun still trapped in a grip she doesn’t seem to feel.
Marisol makes a broken sound and reaches for Reva.
Then stops, her hands fluttering.
God, that stop kills me.
She’s spent fifteen years learning not to grab her daughter. Learning that love too fast can become another kind of trap.
Ever looks at her over Reva’s shoulder, face hard. “Now.”
Permission…order…all of it.
Marisol moves.
She takes Reva’s face in her hands first, then lets her palms slide to Reva’s shoulders when her eyes fail to focus. Delia comes next, stumbling one step before she gets there. She drops her gun into Nash’s hand without looking at him and grips Reva’s arm with both hands.
Reva blinks. Once. Twice. Her gaze goes to the floor.
Isabel lies on her side near the pew, eyes open, mouth slack, blood spreading beneath her ribs.
One of the Volkov men steps close enough to check her pulse, then looks toward Konstantin, who has reappeared near the side aisle with the stillness of a man who watched history happen and decided not to interrupt.
His man gives the smallest tip of his chin.
Dead.
Isabel del Rosario is dead on church stone beneath saints who look neither surprised nor impressed.
Reva makes a sound.
I get to her then.
Ever doesn’t let go, which is wise because I’m not sure she’s standing on purpose.
I come in front of her, blocking her view of the body with mine.
Delia is on one side. Marisol on the other.
Ever behind. Nash near Delia, gun secured, eyes scanning the room.
Deacon has already moved to Isabel, not out of concern.
He checks the body, then the guard, then every face still present.
No one steps in. No one cries for Isabel. That says more than any words could.
“Yank.”
Reva’s eyes move to me, slow and distant.
“I shot her.”
“You sure did.”
“She reached for Delia’s gun. She said she was…Cal—”
“I heard her. We all heard her.”
Her lower lip trembles once, and then her face twists with something too large for one expression. Horror. Relief. Grief. Rage with nowhere to go now that the woman who held it is bleeding on the floor.
“I shot her,” she says again.
Delia’s grip tightens on her arm. “Good.”
Marisol flinches. Reva looks at her sister.
Delia’s eyes are wet and vicious. “Good,” she repeats, voice shaking now. “She reached for my gun. She threatened Cal. She threatened you. Good.”
The word breaks at the end. Reva’s breath stutters. Then Delia is holding her.
It is hard, almost ugly, both of them folding into each other with no grace at all. Ever releases just enough to let it happen while keeping one hand at Reva’s back. Marisol’s arms go around them both, tentative for half a heartbeat, then fierce.
Three women in black, tangled together in the aisle while blood spreads behind them. My throat closes.
Nash moves to my side. “The room?”
“Quiet.” My voice is not fit for more. I clear it and try again. “Too quiet.”
“Good quiet or about-to-be-bad quiet?”
“Jury’s out.”
Konstantin Volkov walks toward us. Every man in the room tracks him.
He stops several feet away from the girls and inclines his head to Delia first. Not Reva.
“This was an unfortunate accident,” he says. His voice is deep, accent thick enough to make the words slower and more deliberate. “An old woman attempted to seize a weapon during a family dispute at my father’s funeral.”
Delia lifts her face from Reva’s shoulder. For a second, they stare at each other. Her cheeks are wet. His father is in a coffin. Isabel is dead between them, and somehow this feels like an introduction.
“Is that what happened?” Delia asks.
Konstantin’s eyes don’t leave hers. “It is what everyone saw.”
A beat. Then Delia nods once. Marisol stills.
Deacon’s mouth tightens in a way that tells me he understands exactly what is being offered. Not mercy. Recognition. A version of events with enough truth to carry and enough control to survive.
Konstantin turns to Marisol. “My condolences.”
“For which death?” she asks.
A faint line appears between his brows. Interest again. Respect, maybe. “Whichever one costs you more.”
Then he looks at Reva.
I do not like that. I move half a step without meaning to.
His gaze flicks to me, then away, dismissing me as no immediate threat and therefore revealing himself to be intelligent but irritating.
“The weapon,” he says, holding out his hand.
Ever already has it. He holds it in a cloth taken from somewhere because Ever is…Ever.
“Handled,” Nash tells him.
Konstantin nods. “Police will be slow. The priest will be slower. My people will grieve privately for the next hour. You should use that hour to disappear.”
Translation: leave.
Translation: he’ll give us time.
Translation: La Rosa and the Volkov family just changed their relationship over Isabel’s corpse.
Marisol draws herself up, one arm still around Delia, one hand on Reva’s back. She looks past us to the La Rosa men who failed to move.
“Anyone who still belongs to her,” she says, voice soft and carrying, “may leave with the body.”
No one moves. Delia’s face changes at that.
Only a little, but enough.
Marisol turns her head to her daughters. “Anyone who belongs to La Rosa may wait for instruction.”
A few eyes lower.
Reva hears the difference. I know she does because her shoulders tense beneath Marisol’s hand. Delia hears it differently. She looks at the men, the women, the Volkovs, the doors, the old soldiers who have not stepped forward and have not walked away.
The chair is empty. The room is waiting to see who sits.
Nash’s hand brushes the inside of my wrist. A small warning. I had started to move toward the women again without a conscious decision to do so.
Ever’s hand settles at Reva’s back again, and Delia touches her wrist. Marisol stays close but doesn’t crowd. Nash speaks quietly with Konstantin. Deacon stands over Isabel long enough to make sure no miracle has the bad taste to occur, then looks toward us.
His eyes find Reva. Something passes through his face. Grief, maybe. Relief.
The end of a task he failed to finish fifteen years ago and was never going to complete the way Isabel wanted.
Outside, sirens start in the distance. Slow, then fading away. Konstantin keeps his word.
Nash turns back. “We need to move.”
Reva’s eyes open, and she looks at Isabel one more time. Then at Delia. Delia nods, and together, they step away from the body.
Not cleanly. Not easily. Reva is shaking, and Delia leans more heavily than she wants anyone to notice. Marisol keeps one hand near both of them, still learning which daughter will accept which kind of touch and when.
Ever retrieves the casing. Nash takes the gun. Deacon opens the side path through the church before anyone else reaches it.
I stay at Reva’s side.
The funeral was supposed to bury Viktor Volkov.
Instead, Isabel fell beneath the icons.
And La Rosa changed hands in a church full of witnesses who had already decided which queen they were willing to let die.