4. Reva #2
“I’ve been sitting here trying to wrap my head around all of this. Work through everything that happened,” I say. “Cal was shot. Delia was dragged back inside. Maybe crazy of all crazies, I found out the woman trying to kill me is my grandmother.”
The word changes the room.
Grandmother.
Nana.
It should belong to sugar and birthday candles and soft hands smoothing hair away from my face. It should belong to someone who kept school pictures on a fridge and kissed scraped knees and smelled like flour, roses, something warm.
Instead, it belongs to Isabel del Rosario.
Mother Superior.
The woman in silk who looked at me like I was unfinished business.
Shiloh’s face tightens. His shock is no longer new. He heard it when I did, through Ever’s feed or in the chaos afterward, but hearing a thing once does not make it settle. Now it sits in the room with us, breathing.
Ever looks at Nash, his expression faintly accusing. It tells me what I need to know.
“You knew,” I say.
Nash does not move. “Yes.”
My chest goes tight in a way that makes the air feel too thin.
I turn to Ever. “But you didn’t.”
His jaw flexes. “I learned it tonight, same as you.”
His voice is rougher than usual. Anger lives beneath it, and none of it is aimed at me.
Shiloh’s hand closes around the back of the couch. “Same.”
That helps, the tiniest little smidge.
If they had all known, if every man in this room had walked me into that ballroom with another secret folded behind his teeth, I think something inside me might have gone quiet for good.
But Ever did not know. Shiloh did not know. Even if Nash did, they did not.
“And Deacon?” I ask. I already know the answer. How could he not have known, living there with Delia and Isabel all these years?
Nash’s eyes hold mine. “He knew.”
“Convenient that he’s at the hospital right now.”
“He should be at the hospital right now.”
“That’s not what I said.”
“I know.”
I laugh once. It has no humor in it. “You and Deacon knew my grandmother ordered me dead, and neither of you thought that was information I deserved before I stood in front of her wearing a mask and a pretty green dress?”
Shiloh’s gaze drops. Ever looks like he wants to put a fist through concrete.
Nash takes it without defense at first. That is the only reason I let him speak when he finally does.
“You had just learned Delia was alive,” he says. “You were carrying the house, the letters, Deacon, Cal’s lies, the assignment. Every answer opened another wound. We knew you could survive learning Mother Superior wanted you dead.”
His voice lowers. “I wasn’t sure you could survive learning she was blood.”
The reason is too human. I wanted cruelty. Strategy. Control. Something cold enough to hate cleanly.
This is fear.
“You don’t get to decide what might break me,” I say.
Nash’s eyes stay on mine. “I know.”
“No.” My voice shakes, and I let it. “You know now. You knew enough tonight to let me walk into that room ignorant. You knew enough to stand beside me while she smiled at me.”
“I did.”
“She called me a mistake.”
His face hardens.
“She looked at me like she had every right to decide whether I lived. And you already knew why.”
The marsh presses, dawn dark and silent against the glass. I can see our reflections there: Nash seated like a judge waiting for sentencing, Shiloh pale with his mouth shut for once, Ever standing half-turned toward the screens because even furious, he cannot stop watching the doors.
“The bitch who looked at two seven-year-old girls and decided one of them was disposable,” I say, the words coming faster now, hotter, “that was my fucking Nana? She took Delia. She took my parents. She took fifteen years from me and then sent a man to put a bullet in Cal because I had the nerve to keep breathing?”
Memories slide through me like smoke under a door.
A gold bracelet flashing near a cake.
Red nails brushing dark hair from my cheek.
Spanish murmured above me. Mija. Ven aquí.
My mother’s voice, strained so tight it barely sounded like hers. Don’t call her that.
The images burn as they come. They should feel soft. They should belong to someone safe. Instead, each one scrapes at the inside of my skull, and my body cannot tell memory from threat.
I reach for the rubber bands.
Snap.
The sting is too small.
Snap.
Still too small.
Nash lifts a hand and starts to rise.
I point at him. “Do not even think about trying to manage me right now.”
He stops.
“I am done being managed.”
My voice fills the room, then shreds at the edges. The marsh stays quiet outside the glass. The house stays beautiful around me. Secure. Remote. Designed by men who believe danger can be held off with codes and cameras and reinforced walls.
Maybe it can.
Maybe bodies can be protected that way.
The rest of me is already loose in the room, wild and furious and looking for somewhere to go.
“I needed the truth,” I say. “I needed it before she smiled at me in that ballroom. I needed it before Delia had to drag me away from a chapel trap. I needed it before Cal stepped in front of a bullet meant for me.”
Shiloh stands slowly.
I shake my head. He stops.
Let them all stop. Let the whole damn world stop putting its hands on me.
“I don’t want comfort,” I say.
My fingers curl in Homer’s harness. He makes one offended chirp and I loosen my grip, breathing hard through my nose.
I set him on the floor before my anger starts borrowing his small body for ballast. He trots away with his leash dragging, tail high, heading straight for the forbidden-looking kitchen island.
“I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want one of you to tell me I’m safe, because every safe place I have ever had came with a locked door and a missing piece of the story.”
Nash’s face tightens, but he gives me silence.
Ever watches me like every word is cutting through him on its way out.
Shiloh’s eyes shine in the low light. He blinks it back and swallows whatever beautiful thing he might have said.
I turn toward the windows.
My reflection stares back at me from the glass.
Pale face. Wild hair. Gray sweatshirt. Rubber bands on one wrist. A bruise starting near my collarbone.
Behind my reflection, the men sit in a line on the couch while I conduct the world’s angriest family meeting in a luxury bunker disguised as a fishing shack.
Because they are still my family. Damnit.
Somewhere across the water, Isabel is alive. Delia is with her. And Cal is breathing through a machine.
My grandmother ordered me dead when I was seven years old, failed, then waited fifteen years and tried again.
The rage in me stops being sharp and turns heavy. Dangerous.
I turn back around and look at Nash, then Ever, then Shiloh.
“I need a drink, and I need to break something,” I mutter.