14. Ryan #3
“Everyone saw yesterday’s video?” A round of tired, irritated yeses. Of course they did. Half of Edgewood did. “Anything important it missed?”
“He showed up without warning,” I say. “Ally didn’t know he was coming. The planner and the ring were before any of it started.”
“Then Tremblay called Harrington like a dog,” Iz says, “Harrington failed obedience school, and we all watched a grown man come apart because an eighteen-year-old wouldn’t heel.” He shrugs. “That’s the short version.”
“It is,” Kaid says.
Arthur nods once and lets it go. Thank fuck. Because yesterday at Edgewood isn’t why we’re here.
I put my phone on the table. “Ally called me at one.”
Dad turns toward me. “She okay?”
I don’t answer right away. Every person at the table notices. Arthur already knows — I sent him everything. The rest of them don’t.
“Roman came home pissed. He knew Victor had gone to Edgewood, knew what happened with us, was already trying to clean it up.” Callum’s expression hardens.
“But that isn’t what happened first.” I unlock the phone.
“Tobias asked if he could live with Ally after she gets married. Told Roman he didn’t want to live there anymore. ” Nobody moves. “Roman slapped him.”
Danny’s head snaps up. “What?”
Kaid straightens. X’s tired face empties. Iz comes off the wall.
Dad doesn’t move at all. “What did you just say?”
“He hit Toby.”
I open the first picture and slide the phone across the table. Dad gets to it first. I watch his face — the mark across Tobias’s cheek, then the swipe, the bruises on his arm. For one second he doesn’t breathe. Then his chair goes back.
“He put his hands on my little buddy?” Arthur watches him carefully. Dad looks at me. “On my Toby?”
“Yeah.”
“That motherfucker.” He pushes away from the table.
“Walter,” Arthur says.
“No.” Dad’s already moving. He points at my phone. “He hit my Toby.”
“I know.”
“Where is Roman?”
“Probably home.”
“Good.” He turns toward the door. Callum steps into his path. Dad stops. “Move.”
“No.”
“Callum.”
“I’m just as pissed as you are.”
“Then come with me.” Under any other circumstances that might be funny. Nobody laughs.
“Tobias is still in that house,” Arthur says from behind them.
Dad’s whole body locks. Arthur doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t need to. Dad turns around. The rage doesn’t leave him — it just gets trapped somewhere with nowhere to go. His eyes drop back to the picture.
“My little buddy.”
Quieter this time. Tobias spends half his life attached to Dad whenever he’s allowed near our house.
He has his own ultrasound picture hidden in Mom’s article folder because he decided the baby is his too.
Dad carries him around so he can see things, lets him talk his ear off about frogs and ghosts and whatever’s taken over his brain that day.
And Tobias calls him my Walter. Dad sits back down. Barely.
“There’s more,” I say. His eyes come to mine. I wish to God there wasn’t. “Ally stepped between them.”
Kaid swears under his breath — of course he understands immediately. All of them do.
“What did Roman do?” X asks.
“He grabbed her.” I swipe to her arm. Dad takes the phone again.
Nobody has to ask what they’re looking at.
Roman’s fingers are printed into her skin.
Another picture. Other arm. “He tried to pull her out of the way. She kept getting back between him and Toby.” Dad’s jaw flexes.
“He grabbed her with both hands.” I hate the next part. “And shook her.”
Danny reacts before anyone else, and it comes out of him like it was ripped loose. “What?”
The room turns to him. He’s gone white. “Danny—“
“How hard, Ryan?”
“Hard.” I watch the question form on his face before he can get to it, and I answer it before he has to say it out loud, because I know exactly why he’s the one asking.
“No bleeding. No cramps. She didn’t fall.
Nothing hit her stomach. I made her go through every one of them with me. She says nothing feels different.”
His chair’s already halfway back. He drags both hands over his face. “Fuck.”
Clifford stands and puts a hand on his shoulder.
Doesn’t tell him to calm down. Just stands there with him.
Theodore’s gone pale too — of course he has.
Becca is his daughter. The baby they lost was his grandchild.
The same shit we’ve been tearing apart for months reached into Danny and Becca’s life once already and took something neither of them even had time to understand they wanted before it was gone.
And now we’re sitting here talking about Ally being shaken while she’s pregnant.
I look back at Dad. His face is terrifying. “He hit her too.”
I swipe again. Her cheek. Her split lip. Dad stares at it. Kaid comes around the table. X follows. Iz is already there. The phone moves between them — Kaid first, expression going blank; X next, going colder; Danny over his shoulder.
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
Iz takes it last. Stares at her face. Then looks at me. “We’re killing him.”
“No,” Arthur says.
“I wasn’t asking.”
“Still no.”
Kaid holds out his hand. “I vote yes.”
“You don’t get a vote.”
“Seems undemocratic.”
“Good.” Usually that would get something out of us. Nothing.
Dad takes my phone back from Iz and looks at her face again. “She’s okay?”
“She was when we got off the phone.”
“And the baby?”
“As far as anyone can know without examining her, yes.”
Dad closes his eyes, thumb pressed to the edge of my phone. When he opens them, he’s looking at Arthur. “Get them out.”
“We’re working on it.”
“Work faster.”
“I intend to.”
“There are more,” I say. Dad looks at me like he already doesn’t want to know. I don’t blame him. I swipe to Jane. That changes the room again.
“Jane?” Gideon leans in.
“She went after Roman when he hit Ally. Pulled him off her.” I swipe through them as I go. “He shoved her into the island. Threw her into the wall. Then the table. Then hit her.”
“Jesus,” Callum mutters. Arthur has already seen these. He still takes the phone and looks at every one.
“First time?” Gideon asks.
“No.”
Dad looks at me. “Ally knew?”
“No.” I give them the part that matters, not every memory. “She watched Jane know what was coming. Roman went for her and Jane changed — turned her face before he hit her, knew exactly when to stop fighting. Then Ally started remembering. Bruises. Long sleeves. Excuses.”
Thomas looks down at the table. Callum swears quietly.
For months we’ve all been pissed at Jane. For not doing enough. For not protecting Ally. For letting Roman run that house while she drank and disappeared into herself. Apparently Roman was doing a hell of a lot more behind those doors than any of us knew.
Arthur sets my phone down carefully. “This helps.” Dad’s head snaps toward him. Arthur lifts a hand before he can start. “I know how that sounds.”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” His anger finally shows — just a flash. “I would prefer Tobias never had a mark on him. I would prefer Alison wasn’t bruised, and that Jane hadn’t spent God knows how long hiding this. But Roman left evidence, Walter. On a minor. On an adult witness. On his wife. All from one incident.”
“So use it.”
“I will. I’ll do everything I can today.”
Dad doesn’t like the qualification. Neither do I. But we’ve already learned what happens when we demand the law move at the speed we want it to.
Arthur looks at me. “What else did Ally tell you?”
I take them through it fast — because they already have the pictures, and the rest is the part that kept me awake.
Jane knew Marianne. Marianne was social, funny, everywhere, until she married Victor and started vanishing behind him.
Victor answering her invitations, cancelling for her, until nobody heard from her directly.
Jane afraid for her sometimes. Roman calling Victor disciplined.
“That tracks with everything we found,” Arthur says.
“There’s more. Ally asked what Roman gets when she marries Victor. Jane said, ‘It isn’t simply what your father gets.’”
Gideon says it first. “So Tremblay gets something.”
“Yeah. And she called it an agreement. Not an arrangement. An agreement.”
Arthur goes still. “Agreement.”
Callum leans back. “That’s not parental matchmaking.”
“No,” Gideon says. “That’s transactional language.”
My stomach turns, because whatever polite fucking word they wrap around it, Ally is the thing standing in the middle of the transaction.
“He gets an eighteen-year-old wife Roman spent her whole life training to obey him. That’s already something.”
Dad’s expression turns murderous again. Arthur doesn’t argue. “You’re right.” That almost makes it worse. “But Jane’s wording says there’s something else attached to it. And she told Ally Roman keeps everything.”
“Everything what?” Dad asks.
“She didn’t say. But Ally thinks Jane was pointing her at something.”
Arthur shakes his head immediately. “No.”
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were going to.” He looks at me. “Ally does not search Roman’s office. She doesn’t go through his computer. She doesn’t suddenly develop an interest in his paperwork. Especially after last night.”
“I fucking know.”
He holds my stare a second, then nods. “Jane gave her that for a reason. We let Jane decide how much farther she’s willing to go.”
“Victor called. After Roman hurt them.” Arthur’s attention sharpens. “Roman ignored the first call. Second one, he answered. Told Victor he was handling it, that he’d been containing the Edgewood fallout. Tried to tell Victor he never should’ve engaged us.”
Dad’s eyes narrow. “Roman told him that?”
“Yeah. And Victor cut him off.”
Dad goes quiet. Arthur notices. “What?”
“Roman doesn’t get cut off,” Dad says. “I’ve known that asshole for years. He barely lets people finish a sentence when he thinks he knows more than they do.”
“Which is always,” Thomas says.
“Exactly. And he let Tremblay shut him up?”
“Then said he’d be there, and left. Immediately.”
Gideon sits back. “They’re not equals.”
“No,” Dad says.
“Or Roman owes him enough that it doesn’t matter,” Arthur says.