28. Deacon
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
DEACON
By dawn, the penthouse has given up all pretense of being a hotel room.
It’s a command post now.
The dining table is covered in laptops, phones, paper maps, hotel stationery, coffee cups, weapons, and one silver room service tray nobody bothered to send away.
Ever sits at one end with three screens open and a fourth balanced on the chair beside him.
Shiloh is barefoot near the windows, curtains drawn behind him, damp hair pushed back, exhaustion lining his face.
Nash stands at the head of the table because men like Nash don’t need thrones.
Everyone in the room already knows where to look.
Delia sits on the sofa with Homer in her lap.
Reva stands behind one of the dining chairs with both hands on the back of it, like she needs furniture between herself and the rest of us.
She’s wearing the same hoodie she wore to the hospital.
Her hair is braided again, neater than before, which means someone else did it.
Probably Shiloh. Her face still holds sleep in soft places, but her eyes are wide awake and too bright.
She keeps glancing at the door, then at my phone, then at me.
I know what she is counting. Who is here, and who is at the hospital. Whether someone is still breathing because we are not watching him with our own eyes.
Cal is under Blackwood guard. Five men now, rotating in pairs, with one in the lobby, one in the garage, one on the stairwell, and two on the ICU floor.
Ever has access to the hospital cameras again after a brief argument with their system and a longer one with their outside vendor.
The nurse assigned to Cal is clean. The doctor updated Nash twenty-three minutes ago.
No change. No change is good when every other direction is down. Reva doesn’t trust good, though.
I don’t blame her.
Her gaze flicks to my phone again.
I cross the room without making an announcement. She sees me coming and stiffens, chin lifting like she is preparing for a fight she does not have energy to win.
I slide her to the side, then sit in the chair she is holding on to and pull her into my lap.
She makes a small sound of protest that fools no one, least of all me. Her body resists for half a breath, then settles sideways across my thighs, one hand landing against my chest to steady herself. I wrap both arms around her and keep her there.
The tension in her shoulders does not disappear, but it lowers. It’s enough for now.
Across the room, Delia rolls her eyes toward the ceiling and makes a sound akin to Shirley MacLaine in any movie she’s ever played in. Irascible Female, I think is the role.
“Y’all can’t keep your hands and your dicks off my sister for five fucking seconds, can you?”
Shiloh looks over. “We tried once. It was a terrible five seconds.”
Reva points at him without lifting her head from my shoulder. “Uh-uh. Not going there.”
He presses his lips together with great dignity.
Delia looks at me. “Do you people have meetings like this often?”
“Rarely with cats.”
Homer meows, offended.
Reva’s fingers twist in my shirt. “Is Cal really covered?”
“Yes.”
“You checked?”
“I was there until forty minutes ago.”
“And if something changes?”
“My phone rings. Nash’s phone rings. Ever’s system screams loudly enough to wake the dead.”
“That last part is true,” Ever says without looking up.
Reva takes a breath, her ribs expanding against my arm.
Nash waits until she nods once before beginning.
His gaze goes to Delia. “Have you had contact with Marisol?”
Reva goes still in my lap.
Delia’s hand stops on Homer’s back. “Yes.”
“When?”
“Forty minutes ago. Check-in text.”
Ever’s eyes lift. “Wording?”
Delia pulls her phone from the pocket of her borrowed sweatpants and reads from the screen. “‘Candle still lit. Storm seems to be passing over us. Tell your sister I am sorry for the weather.’”
Reva lets out a small, humorless laugh. “That is both weird and dramatic.”
Delia studies the message. “It means she’s alive, unwatched enough to mention Reva, and thinks Isabel is occupied elsewhere,” Delia says.
“Does Isabel know she left?” Nash asks.
“Probably.”
“Does she know Marisol reached Reva?”
Delia hesitates. I don’t like the hesitation.
“Maybe,” she says. “Maybe not. Isabel has always allowed Mother small freedoms when she thinks they cost nothing. Hospital visits to certain donors. Charity committees. Condolence calls. Things that make her useful and visible.”
Reva looks away, and my arms tighten before I think better of it.
Nash’s expression remains controlled. “The attack on Shiloh’s vehicle. Was it linked to Marisol?”
“No,” Ever says before Delia can answer. “Timeline is wrong. The tail was in position before Marisol left the chapel. They picked up movement at the hospital. Likely watching for Reva, Deacon, or any unscheduled Blackwood activity.”
Shiloh folds his arms. “Or all three, because Isabel believes in overachievement.”
Ever ignores him. “The surviving phones had no outgoing burst after Marisol appeared on any camera I could access. No indication the hit team knew she was in the building.”
“That does not mean Isabel doesn’t know now,” Nash says.
“No.”
Delia’s jaw tightens. “If she knew for certain, the text would not have come through. Mother would already be locked down or corrected.”
Reva’s fingers dig into my shirt. The room absorbs the word. Corrected. No one asks Delia to explain.
Nash looks at me. “Can we extract Marisol?”
Deacon answers. “Yes.”
Delia’s head snaps up. “No.”
Reva sits straighter. “Why no?”
“Because if you drag her out of La Rosa without her choosing it, you put every person she has spent fifteen years shielding directly under Isabel’s knife.”
Shiloh’s face changes. “What people?”
Delia’s mouth presses thin. “Servants. Girls. Junior women with bad fathers and worse husbands. Boys Isabel decided were useful enough to break early. Anyone Mother has influence over because Isabel thinks compassion is harmless when it’s held in a cage.”
Reva stares at her sister. I feel the question move through her body.
Did she shield you?
Delia does not answer the unasked thing. Maybe she cannot. Maybe the answer is too large for morning.
Nash says, “Then we ask. We do not drag.”
“That may work,” Delia says. “If she believes both of her daughters are both protected.”
Reva’s laugh is brittle. “Love being discussed in third person by my own twin.”
Delia’s brows lift. “You are perching in an assassin’s lap during a cartel succession meeting. I assumed we had abandoned normal.”
Shiloh coughs.
Reva’s mouth twitches despite herself, then flattens again. “So we get her here if she agrees.”
“If she agrees,” Nash says.
I watch Delia while he says it.
Her face is composed, but her fingers move in Homer’s fur with careful precision. She knows where this is going. She may have known from the moment she sat in this room and saw all of us looking at her with the same conclusion in different shapes.
Nash sets both hands on the back of his chair. “There is no clean version of what comes next.”
“Surprising,” Reva mutters.
His gaze flicks to her, then back to Delia. “Killing Isabel is possible. Ending what she controls is harder.”
“She controls La Rosa,” Delia says.
“Yes.”
“And you think removing her creates a vacuum.”
“I know it does.”
Delia’s expression goes cold. “What are you thinking?”
No one speaks, and Reva shifts against me. I don’t look at Nash. This answer needs to come from me.
Delia has known me the longest. Not as this, maybe. Not as Reva’s man, not fully. But as the shape inside Isabel’s halls. The weapon near the wall. The boy turned soldier turned killer. The person who watched her become a silent queen in a nightmare built to make girls kneel.
“You,” I say.
Reva’s breath catches. Delia looks at me as if I slapped her. Then she laughs—once, a bark of sound. There’s no humor in it. No surprise either, which tells me enough.
“I don’t want La Rosa.”
“I’m aware.”
“No.” She leans forward, and Homer protests at the shift. “I don’t think you are. I don’t want Isabel’s chair. I don’t want her rooms, her ledgers, her men, her prayers, her ridiculous rules about blood and roses and who gets to breathe with permission. I don’t want any of it.”
“I know.”
“Stop saying that like it helps.”
“It doesn’t help,” I say. “And it’s still true.”
Her eyes flash with anger. I keep my voice even because anything else will turn this into a fight she can refuse on principle. “You would not lead as Isabel did.”
Delia’s mouth twists. “Pretty promise.”
“No. Infrastructure. Nash has money, routes, lawyers, men, and legitimate businesses that can absorb or starve off pieces of La Rosa. Ever can dismantle surveillance and communication structures faster than Isabel can replace them. Shiloh knows every soft point in this city because people tell him things when he smiles.”
Shiloh lifts two fingers. “My contribution is being slutty and approachable. Noted.”
Nash gives him a look. Shiloh drops his hand. “Jesus, sorry. Lighten up.”
I continue, eyes on Delia. “I know where bodies are buried and which men put them there. Marisol knows the old bloodline truths Isabel hid or bent. Reva has the failed-death myth Isabel created by failing to kill her.”
Reva goes rigid. “I am not a myth.”
“No,” I say. “You’re worse. You’re proof.”
She swallows. Delia looks between us, something sharp and unwilling moving behind her eyes.
“If you sit in that chair,” I tell her, “it does not have to remain a throne. It can become a lock. A temporary one if that’s what you want. A way to keep the worst men from reaching for it first while we tear out what cannot be saved.”
“You make it sound so simple.”
“It will be bloody.”
“Finally. Truth.”
“It will also keep you alive.”
Her gaze hardens. I do not let her look away from the rest of it.
“And Reva. And Marisol.”
Reva’s voice is faint when she speaks. “Can’t we just leave?”
Every head turns toward her, and she just barely keeps herself from squirming. I feel the instant regret in the way she sits taller, as if she can pull the desperation back by making her spine straighter.
“I mean it,” she says, quieter now. “Move somewhere. Start over. Cal, if he wakes up. Delia. Marisol, if she’ll come. All of you. We have money, don’t we? Fake names. Routes. Whatever. Why does it have to be this?”
My arms close around her before I decide to do it.
She doesn’t melt. She holds herself carefully in my lap, small and fierce and painfully young for one second. Twenty-two. A girl who should be worried about rent and bad dates and whether her cat will destroy hotel furniture, not cartel succession and the living mother she buried as a child.
Across from us, Delia laughs without humor. “No.”
Reva looks at her. “You didn’t even think about it.”
“I have thought about running since I was seven years old.”
Reva’s chin tips up in acknowledgment.
Delia pets Homer once, slow enough to steady her hand.
“You can’t walk away from a cartel. You can change your name, your hair, your face, your country…
it doesn’t matter. Someone hears something.
Someone owes someone. Someone sees a picture on a phone in a bar.
Someone gets paid more than they love you. ”
Reva goes quiet.
Delia’s eyes are dry. Exhausted. Certain.
“You would hide for the rest of your life. Every window. Every restaurant. Every school if you ever had children. Every hospital visit. Every person who smiled too long or stood too close. And Isabel would still keep reaching, because you living is an insult she cannot leave unanswered.”
My hand spreads over Reva’s stomach, holding her against the truth.
Delia looks at me then, her eyes sparking. “Deacon is right,” she says. “As much as I hate him for it.”
Shiloh’s expression softens in a way he hides by looking at the floor. Reva doesn’t move.
I press my mouth near her temple, not quite a kiss. “Disappearing only works when no one is hunting the idea of you.”
Her fingers close over my wrist, and she nods. Delia shifts Homer from her lap and stands.
The movement is careful because her knees are still injured, but her spine straightens inch by inch until the room changes around her.
No crown. No pearls. No silk blouse or ceremonial chair.
Borrowed sweatpants, bandaged wrists, bare feet on an expensive rug, and still, every inch of her looks like the thing Isabel spent fifteen years trying to build and failed to fully own.
A queen, whether she wants the word or not.
I always knew she would become one. I just hoped that it might happen in an easier, more deserving world.
Delia looks at Nash first. Then Ever. Then Shiloh. Then me.
Last, at Reva.
“What’s the plan?”
Reva’s hand tightens around my wrist again.
Nash’s mouth curves slightly, not with pleasure. With recognition. “We need information before we need bullets.”
“Then ask.”
Ever brings one laptop to the coffee table and turns it so Delia can see. “Structure. Names. Loyalties. Who stays loyal to Isabel if she looks weak?”
“Most of the old guard,” Delia says. “At first.”
“At first?” Shiloh asks.
“If they believe she can still punish them. Less if they believe someone with blood has already taken the room.”
Nash pulls a notebook from the table and opens it. “Who hates her?”
Delia’s laugh is soft and ugly. “Everyone.”
“That is not useful.”
“Well, it’s accurate.”
“Who hates her enough to act?”
Delia looks down at the blank page.
For the first time since standing, she seems to realize what she has chosen by asking for the plan. The old instincts move across her face. Caution. Calculation. The fear of speaking names aloud and making them real.
Reva slips off my lap. I let her go.
She crosses to her sister’s side, still pale, still wrecked around the eyes, but steadier now. She does not touch Delia. She only stands beside her and looks down at the same blank page.
Delia notices, glancing at where their shoulders almost align.
“Start with the women,” Reva says.
Delia’s eyes cut to hers.
“The ones Marisol shielded,” Reva says. “The ones Isabel thinks are harmless.”
For a moment, Delia says nothing. Then she reaches for the pen in Nash’s hand. He gives it to her without comment.
Delia writes the first name.
Then a second.
Then a third.
We all lean toward the page, breath collectively held as the page begins to fill. Then I sit back and watch the ghost and the heir begin taking Isabel apart, one name at a time.