6. Ryan #3
“Very observant.” Mom rolls her eyes. I grin.
“My dad taught me how to stand up. My mom taught me how to listen. Dad taught me how to keep my head when shit gets ugly. Mom taught me how to hear what somebody isn’t saying.
” Tobias looks between them. “And both of them taught me that being strong doesn’t mean making somebody else small.
” Ally goes very still beside me. I squeeze her hand.
“You don’t need Victor to teach you how to be a man.
You don’t need Roman to make you hard. You don’t need to stop crying or stop hugging your mom or stop running to your sister. ”
“What do I need?”
I smile. “To keep being Tobias.”
He looks unimpressed. “I’m already Tobias.”
“Then you’re ahead of schedule.” Dad laughs.
“Good.” I pull my phone out. “Now that the serious man shit is handled—“
“Ryan,” Mom warns.
“Sorry.” I unlock the screen. “Want to see your niece or nephew?”
His mouth drops open. “I’m Uncle Tobias? But I’m six.”
“Apparently there isn’t an age requirement.”
He looks at Ally. “Really?”
She nods, already crying again. “Really.”
“Does it know?”
That breaks her. She laughs through a sob. “Not yet.”
“We should tell it.”
I unlock the pregnancy app. Ally looks over, her eyebrows pulling together. “What are you doing?”
“Showing him the baby.”
“You have the app?”
“Obviously.”
Tobias climbs halfway into my lap to see the screen. “Where is it?”
“Here.” I pull up the week and turn the phone toward him. His eyes get enormous.
“That’s the baby?”
“That’s about what the baby looks like right now.”
“It’s tiny.”
“Very.”
“How tiny?” I show him with my fingers.
His mouth drops open. “That’s all?”
“For now.”
“Can I touch Ally’s tummy?”
Ally’s face softens completely. “Yeah, baby.”
He slides off the couch and moves in front of her. She takes his hand and places it low against her stomach. “You won’t feel anything yet.”
“But it’s there?”
“It’s there.”
Tobias leans closer. “Hi, baby.”
Mom immediately covers her mouth. Dad looks down. I’m fucking done for.
Tobias pats Ally’s stomach gently. “I’m Tobias. I’m six.” Ally lets out a watery laugh. “And I’m your uncle.” Her tears spill over. He looks up. “Good tears?”
She nods. “Very good tears.”
He turns back to her stomach. “I know frogs.” Of fucking course. “I can teach you how to catch them.” Ally laughs harder. “And fishing. I’m really good at fishing.”
“You are,” she whispers.
“And Ryan plays lacrosse.”
“Thank God I brought something to this family.”
Tobias looks at her stomach again. “Dad says lacrosse is stupid.”
I stare at him. “Okay, now Roman has officially crossed a fucking line.”
“Ryan!”
“What? That’s where I draw it.”
Tobias giggles. Dad laughs. Mom groans. Ally reaches for me.
I sit beside her, and Tobias immediately wedges himself between us, one little hand still resting on her stomach and my phone balanced on his knee while he studies the app.
Ally threads her fingers through mine behind him. She squeezes. Hard. I squeeze back.
No thank-you. She doesn’t need to thank me. No apology. She already gave the one that mattered. She panicked. I caught her. Tobias got scared. I caught him too. That’s what we’re doing now. Together.
Across the room, Dad catches my eye. One small nod.
The same one I’ve gotten my entire life.
I know exactly where I learned how to do what I just did — how to get quieter when everyone else gets louder, how to tell a kid the truth without handing him more than he can carry, how to let him cry without making him ashamed of it.
Dad taught me that. Then I look at Mom, watching Tobias scroll through my phone, that little smile at the corner of her mouth.
She taught me the rest. Listen. Don’t attack the answer you’re looking for.
Give people somewhere safe to put the truth and they’ll usually hand it to you themselves.
And somehow I became both of them — with enough of myself mixed in to know that Tobias doesn’t need another man telling him what kind of man he’s supposed to become.
He needs people who make sure Roman and Victor don’t beat everything soft and good out of him before he’s old enough to realize softness was never the fucking problem.
Ally has spent years trying to be that person for him. She doesn’t have to do it alone anymore.
Tobias leans against my side. Ally leans against the other.
And for three stolen hours in my parents’ lake house, there is no Victor waiting to turn Ally into his wife.
No Roman teaching Tobias that fear is respect.
There’s Ally. There’s our baby. There’s her little brother. There’s my parents. There’s me.
And right now, that’s enough.
Dad wakes me at five in the morning by sitting on the edge of my bed. That is how I know something is wrong.
Not the time. Five isn’t especially offensive in this house — Dad is usually awake before the sun, Mom considers sleep an inconvenience when she’s working on something, and I’ve spent enough years playing lacrosse that early mornings don’t qualify as a human rights violation anymore.
It’s the fact that Walter Harrington is sitting silently in my bedroom.
I open my eyes and stare at the dark outline of him for half a second before reaching for my phone.
No missed calls. No new messages from Ally.
Her last one came a little after midnight, telling me Tobias was asleep, Roman hadn’t asked any questions when they got home from the lake, and she was going to bed.
I’d made her promise to eat first. She’d called me insufferable, sent me a picture of an empty cereal bowl as proof, then told me our kid was apparently trying to bankrupt her family through groceries before it was even born. Nothing since.
“What happened?”
Dad keeps his voice low. “Arthur called me about an hour ago.”
That gets me upright. “What happened?”
“He got a call from the federal prosecutor at four.”
Every bit of sleep disappears. “About Roman?”
“About the information Ally gave you.”
I shove the blanket off my legs. “What did they find?”
“He didn’t tell me.”
“Dad.”
“He didn’t tell me because Arthur didn’t get much over the phone either. There was enough overlap in what you gave him Friday that the federal team started pulling pieces from the Pennington and Anderson investigations. Something came back overnight.”
I scrub both hands over my face. Dad waits. He knows better than to tell me to calm down. Probably because he’s spent eighteen years raising me and would like to see nineteen.
“He wants everyone at his house at six. The five of you. Arthur, me, Callum, Gideon, Clifford, Theodore, and Thomas.”
I look at the time. 5:03. “Jesus Christ.”
“Exactly.”
I get out of bed and grab yesterday’s sweatpants from the chair. Dad still doesn’t move. “What?”
“Before we go downstairs, there’s something else.” Dad watches me pull a shirt over my head. “You told Arthur Friday that Tremblay wanted to see Ally today.” My stomach tightens.
“Yeah. Why?”
“Because I know you.”
“Congratulations.”
“And I’m telling you now, before Arthur tells you in front of everyone else, that if Tremblay takes Ally somewhere today, you are not following them.”
I stare at him. “Did I say I was?”
“No.”
“Then we’re good.”
“We’re not.”
“Dad.”
“You’ve been awake for three minutes, and I can already see you planning it.”
I look away. Because, yeah. Obviously I’ve thought about following her. I’ve thought about putting a tracker in her bag. I’ve thought about putting one on Victor’s car. I’ve thought about installing one directly into Victor Tremblay’s fucking skull. I have options.
“I won’t do anything that puts her at risk.”
Dad’s expression doesn’t change. “That’s not the same promise.”
“It’s the one I’m making.”
For a second, he just looks at me. Then he sighs. “Your mother says this is what I get for teaching you to think independently.”
“She’s right.”
“Your mother is always right. It’s exhausting.” That gets the corner of my mouth. Barely. Dad stands. “Ten minutes.”
“Fifteen.” His eyebrows lift. “You just woke me up for a six-a.m. organized crime summit. I’m showering.”
“That’s remarkably considerate.”
“Fuck off.” He reaches the door before I stop him. “Dad.” He turns. “Did Arthur sound worried?”
Dad doesn’t bullshit me. “Yes.”
“Ten minutes,” I say.
By five fifty-seven, Dad and I are walking into Arthur Walsh’s house. Iz opens the door wearing sweatpants, a black T-shirt, and the expression of someone personally offended that his father has decided federal crime requires him to be conscious before sunrise. He steps aside. “Welcome to hell.”
“Morning.”
“No, it isn’t.” Dad pats his shoulder as he passes, and Iz looks at me. “X is already here.”
“Why?”
“He trains at an hour reserved for farmers and serial killers.”
We follow Dad toward Arthur’s study. Xander is on the couch with Gideon, completely dressed, awake, and eating something out of a protein bar wrapper like six in the morning is a normal time for his body to function.
Danny is slumped in a chair beside Clifford with his hood up and both hands wrapped around coffee.
Theodore is across from them. Kaiden is leaning against Arthur’s desk while Callum talks quietly with Thomas.
Arthur is behind the desk. He looks like he hasn’t moved since four.
Folders are open everywhere. His laptop is on.
Two legal pads are covered in handwriting, and there’s a stack of printed pages beside his elbow that wasn’t there the last time we did one of these — which is saying something, because apparently gathering in somebody’s father’s office to discuss federal investigations is just a thing we fucking do now.
X looks at me when I walk in. “You look terrible.”
“You look annoyingly alive.”
“I was supposed to train at five.”
Iz drops into the chair beside him. “We know. You’ve mentioned it four times.”
“Because I’m making sacrifices for this family.”
Danny lifts his head from his coffee. “You hit people.”
“Professionally.”
“Amateurly.”