2. Ryan #5
Theodore speaks for the first time in a while. “And what happens when he learns otherwise?”
“We don’t know,” Arthur says.
Katya’s hand closes around the arm of her chair.
“We know enough.” Everyone looks at her; her English gets more accented when she’s angry, and it’s getting more accented by the word.
“We know there is a man who thinks a young woman’s virginity belongs in a contract.
A father who makes such a contract is worse. ”
“Katya’s right,” Theodore says quietly, and looks at Ally.
“Men who treat marriage as a transaction rarely become less dangerous when the terms change.” Becca looks at him, and he doesn’t look away.
“And men who let their daughters become part of those transactions don’t deserve the benefit of anyone’s patience. ”
Arthur leans forward. “Which is why no one does anything tonight.” Half the room looks personally offended, Saoirse most of all. Arthur sighs. “I mean against Roman or Tremblay. Directly.”
“Oh, you should specify,” Iz says. “Some of these women have priors.”
Penny turns on him. “Excuse you?”
Iz spreads his hands and looks around the room. “Am I wrong, though?”
Arthur looks back at Ally. “The boys already understand the larger problem. The pregnancy accelerates it, that’s all — it’s a clock now, where before we had time.”
Callum nods. “Because she can’t hide it indefinitely.”
“Correct.”
“And because discovery jeopardizes whatever Roman is getting out of Tremblay,” Thomas adds.
Mom folds her arms. “Meaning Roman has motive to lock Ally down harder the second he finds out.”
“And Tremblay has motive to retaliate,” Dad says.
Saoirse’s hand never leaves Ally’s. “Then she doesn’t go home.”
Ally’s whole body goes tight. “Tobias.” One word. The wall.
Arthur nods. “Exactly the problem.”
Saoirse looks at him. “She’s eighteen. She can leave.”
“She can. Tobias can’t.”
Ally looks at the floor. “I won’t leave him."
“We know,” Arthur says.
“I mean it. I’m not going anywhere without him.”
“So do I. Then Tobias is part of the plan.” Her eyes fill. “But I need you to understand the problem before we talk about solutions.”
“I know the problem.”
“You know your problem. I need to walk you through the legal one.” Ally sits back, Becca still holding one hand and Cat the other, Saoirse’s palm resting on her shoulder — it’s almost ridiculous, the wall of them, except that Ally looks less alone than I have ever seen her, so I’ll take ridiculous.
Arthur starts. “You’re eighteen. Roman can’t legally force you to stay in his home.
” Ally nods. “Tobias is six. Roman and Jane are his legal parents.” Another nod.
“If you take Tobias without their consent, or without a court order, Roman can report that his adult daughter walked off with his minor child.”
Ally goes pale, and Mom leans forward. “Arthur.”
“I’m not trying to frighten her, Cassandra.
I need her to understand why we can’t just put Tobias in Ryan’s car tonight and drive.
” He looks back at Ally. “It would give Roman a clean, fast, legal route to take Tobias right back — and to restrict your access to him afterward, permanently. That’s the real danger.
Not just that you’d get in trouble. That you’d lose him. ”
“Would I get arrested?” Ally asks.
“Potentially.”
I’m forward in my seat. “Absolutely fucking not.”
Arthur gives me a look. “I’m answering her honestly.”
“Then answer better.”
“Ryan,” Dad says, hand landing on my shoulder, and I shut up.
Arthur sighs. “We need a legal basis to remove Tobias from Roman and Jane’s care and place him somewhere safe.”
“With me.”
“That’s one option.”
Ally sits up. “It's the only option, Arthur.”
Arthur studies her for a second. “Then that’s what we work toward. What do you need from me to get there — that’s the question, and the answer is proof.”
“I have proof,” I cut in.
“You have pieces.”
“Same thing.”
“It is emphatically not the same thing.” He turns back to Ally before I can argue.
“I need documentation establishing you as Tobias’s primary caregiver.
School records, emergency contacts, medical records, text messages, teachers, coaches — anything that shows that although Roman and Jane are his legal parents, you are functionally raising him. ”
“I can get all of that,” Ally says immediately.
“Good. And documentation of Roman’s threats.” Her face changes, and Arthur catches it. “Does he use Tobias to control you?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Ally takes a breath. “He reminds me Tobias is his. If I don’t cooperate.” Nobody moves. “If I argue about Tremblay.” Mom’s jaw locks. “If I bring up leaving.” Callum swears under his breath. “He tells me I can go whenever I want.” Arthur’s pen stops. Ally’s voice gets smaller. “But Tobias stays.”
There it is. The whole cage. Not locked doors — a six-year-old boy who catches frogs at the lake.
Arthur writes something down. “Have any of those threats been in writing? Texts, emails, anything?”
“Maybe. I’d have to look.”
“Don’t search tonight if there’s any chance he notices.”
“I can do it safely. I know his patterns better than he does.”
Arthur glances between us. “Good. Slowly. Carefully. Nothing that leaves a trace.”
Then Darla speaks up. “What about Jane?”
Ally shuts down instantly. “No.”
“I’m not asking you to turn on your mother,” Darla says gently.
“She’s not like him. She drinks…” Nobody reacts, not visibly, and Ally keeps going, the words coming out flat and careful. “She’s depressed. She’s just... gone, most of the time.”
Saoirse’s expression changes — not to anger now, to something older and sadder. “Survival can look like disappearing,” she says.
“But Tobias still needs a parent,” Arthur says, quiet. “And if Jane can’t safely be that parent, we need to know it. That’s not a betrayal. That’s just information.”
Ally’s eyes fill. “I don’t want to hurt her.”
“Protecting Tobias isn’t hurting your mother,” Mom says.
“It’ll feel like it.”
“Probably,” Mom says. No lie. “But that doesn’t make it wrong.”
Arthur looks around the room. “We need more. And we get it correctly — not quickly. We don’t alert Roman, we don’t alert Tremblay, and we gather enough that when we finally move, there is no easy legal road left for him to drag Tobias back.”
“How long?” I ask.
“I don’t know.”
“No. I need better than that.”
“I don’t have better than that, Ryan. I won’t invent a number to make you feel better.”
“What if she’s showing next week?”
“Then we adjust.” Darla answers before I can push. “We control what we can control. Medical care stays invisible. Clothing buys time. We watch her health like hawks. And if her physical safety changes — if it becomes dangerous for her to be in that house — she leaves.”
Ally stiffens. “Without Tobias?”
Nobody wants to answer that. Arthur does. “If your immediate physical safety is at risk — yes. In that specific case, yes.”
“No.”
I turn toward her. “Baby—“
“No. I’m not leaving him.”
“I know.”
“That’s what he says,” she whispers. “He says I can go, I just have to leave Tobias.”
I wait until she’s actually looking at me.
“But that’s not what this is. If Roman finds out and you’re in danger, I come for you first — because I can’t help him if you’re dead.
And then I keep coming for Tobias. We all do.
” I look around the room, at every single person in it.
“Nobody forgets him because you got out. That’s not how this works. Not with us.”
“No,” Saoirse says.
“Never,” Mom says.
“Absolutely not,” Louise says, fierce.
Alice nods, and Katya says something quiet in Russian before adding, “Both children.” Ally looks at her, and Katya gestures at her stomach. “All of them. Every one.”
Arthur lets it settle, then looks around the room one more time. “We do this correctly. Everyone takes a lane.”
Arthur takes the legal framework, Callum working beside him.
Dad and Thomas start mapping Roman’s political relationships.
Mom takes my existing timeline and begins ripping it apart with journalist questions.
Gideon starts identifying the public-facing relationships around both men — firms, media contacts, anyone whose name could matter if this ever goes public.
Theodore takes the corporate structures, and Clifford joins him, because apparently money laundering looks enough like falsified research data that it personally offends him.
Saoirse stays with Ally, and so do the girls.
Darla owns the pregnancy. And Louise, Alice, Katya, and Mom keep drifting back toward Ally even while they’re working elsewhere.
The mothers don’t stop circling. Not once.
At some point Iz walks past me and nods toward the couch. “Roman is so fucked.”
I look. Ally’s in the middle of it — Cat beside her with a notebook, Penny at her feet, Becca shoulder to shoulder, Saoirse on the arm, Louise bringing her food, Alice setting down tea, Katya adjusting the blanket over her legs, and Mom leaning in to show Cat something on her phone.
I narrow my eyes. “No.”
Mom looks up. “What?”
“Is that the baby shower spreadsheet?”
Cat immediately clutches the phone to her chest. “No.”
Mom points at me. “We are allowed to have a little joy while we solve a crisis, Ryan.”
“Fine,” I groan.
Cat gasps. “Did Ryan Harrington just approve a spreadsheet?”
“No.”
“I distinctly heard yes.”
“You heard wrong.”
Mom turns the phone back around. “We’re going to need a private Pinterest board.”
“Jesus Christ.”
Ally laughs, and the room keeps moving around her, and that’s when I finally understand what this actually is.
Not a war room. Not yet. A family — a fucked-up, overqualified, occasionally criminal, deeply codependent family — with Ally sitting in the middle of it, one hand over our baby, while eight women quietly decide she belongs to them now.
Roman has no idea what’s coming for him.