31. Ever
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
EVER
Reva jerks against my chest.
One second, she’s standing in front of me with my hand settled at the base of her neck, listening to Marisol tell the story of how her parents ran with two little girls and no photographs, no heirlooms, no favorite toys.
The next, every muscle in her body locks. Her gaze narrows on Delia.
“What the fuck did you say?”
The office goes still.
Beyond the closed door, the industrial fans keep growling through Noir, pushing smoke and bleach and lemon oil through the old walls. Someone drops something glass in the front of the bar. The sound breaks, scatters, then disappears beneath the hum of equipment and careful, paid-for silence.
Inside Nash’s office, no one moves.
Nash stands behind his desk, both hands planted on the edge, his face carved into something cold enough to cut.
Deacon is near the door with his arms crossed, jaw tight, eyes fixed on Delia as if he already sees the damage opening beneath her feet.
Shiloh straightens from where he’s leaning close to the bookshelves, one shoulder against the wall, humor vanished in a second.
Marisol sits in one of the leather chairs, pale and rigid, fingers twisted together in her lap.
Delia remains standing beside the desk. She doesn’t flinch under Reva’s stare.
“You heard me.”
Reva moves forward, and I catch her around the waist before she can take more than half a step.
She doesn’t fight me. That bothers me more than if she did.
“No,” she says. “No, I don’t think I did. Because it sounded a whole lot like you just said I’m the reason Isabel found us.”
Delia’s mouth tightens.
Marisol’s voice comes out thin. “Delia.”
“No.” Delia’s tone goes flat now, too controlled. “She should know.”
“Explain yourself!” Reva demands. She snaps a rubber band, once, then again.
The sharpness is still there, but something else has started moving underneath it. Fear. Not of Delia. Not even of Isabel. Of memory, maybe. Of the empty places inside her childhood where too many people have been keeping too many answers.
Delia looks at the floor for one second. When she lifts her eyes, she looks younger.
“I walked by Dad’s office,” she says. “It was afternoon. I don’t remember the day. I remember the light because it was bright and sunny all over the floor, and I remember being angry because you were in there and I thought you weren’t supposed to be.”
Reva’s breathing changes against my arm.
“I saw you with one of Dad’s phones,” Delia continues. “The small black one he kept in his drawer. You had it on speaker.”
Marisol’s face goes gray.
Reva shakes her head. “I don’t remember that.”
“I didn’t think much of it at first. I heard Nana’s voice.”
Nana.
The word moves through the office like dragging chains.
Delia’s mouth curls with old bitterness. “I wanted to talk to her too. It had been a long time. I’d almost forgotten what she sounded like. So I walked in and started yelling because I was four and apparently already horrible.”
“You weren’t horrible,” Marisol says.
Delia doesn’t look at her. “I said it was my turn. I remember that. I tried to take the phone, and then Nana said your name.”
Reva has almost stopped breathing. My grip tightens.
Delia looks directly at her. “She said, ‘Hang up the phone, Reva.’ And it hurt my feelings because why didn’t she want to talk to me, too?”
The room breaks silently.
Marisol’s expression mirrors Reva’s so exactly it hurts to look at both of them at once. Same shock. Same horror. Same realization forming in the eyes before the mind can defend against it.
Reva slips from my grasp.
I go down with her, one knee hitting the rug as she folds to the floor, hands pressed to her mouth. Her lips move before sound comes out.
“My fault.”
“No.” My hand reaches for her and stops short.
“It’s my fault.” Her voice is thin now. Child-small. “It’s all my fault.”
Marisol is there before anyone else can move.
She drops to her knees in front of Reva with no care for grace, skirt twisting beneath her, hands reaching and stopping, reaching again because instinct is stronger than fear. She grips Reva’s shoulders first, gentle and firm, then takes her face between both palms.
Reva freezes. Marisol’s thumbs tremble against her cheeks.
“No, baby girl. No.” Her voice cracks clean down the middle. “It’s not your fault.”
Reva’s eyes are huge, glassy, fixed on her mother’s face like she doesn’t know how to process being touched by hands she thought were buried.
“I called her,” she whispers. “I called her, and she came, and Dad—”
“No.” Marisol bends closer. “Listen to me. You were a child.”
“I knew the phone.”
“You were a child.”
“I heard her voice.”
“You were four years old.” Marisol’s tears spill unchecked now. “Four. That house was found because a woman warped by power and greed and madness decided children were property and disobedience deserved blood. That is not yours to carry.”
Reva shakes her head, but Marisol holds her face steady.
“Not yours,” she says again. “Do you hear me? Not yours.”
Reva’s mouth opens. Nothing comes out.
I stay beside her because every part of me wants to pull her away from the woman who just touched a wound with bare hands, and every part of me knows yanking Reva back now would do damage of its own. My hand settles on the floor near hers. Close enough for her to choose. Not closing over it yet.
Deacon’s voice cuts through the room, quiet and hard.
“We don’t know that Reva made the call.”
Every head turns. He hasn’t moved from the door, but the air around him sharpens.
Delia looks at him. “What?”
“You saw her on the phone.” Deacon pushes off the doorframe. “You heard Isabel speak to her.”
“Yes.”
“Did you see Reva dial?”
Delia opens her mouth. Stops. Her brow furrows.
Deacon takes one step toward the center of the room. “Did you see her take the phone out of Frank’s drawer? Did you hear the call connect? Did Reva tell you she called Nana, or did you walk in after there was already a voice on speaker?”
Delia’s face changes by degrees. Memory moving under pressure.
“I…” Her gaze goes to the desk, then away from it, as though this office has become the one from fifteen years ago. “I don’t know.”
Reva is still shaking between Marisol’s hands.
Deacon keeps his voice even. “Isabel could’ve placed the call.”
Marisol’s breath catches.
“She could’ve called the phone,” he continues.
“Reva could’ve answered because she heard the phone ring, and then she recognized the voice or because she was alone and curious.
Frank may have left it out. Someone else may have forced the connection.
We know what Delia heard. That isn’t the same as knowing how the call began. ”
Nash’s eyes narrow.
He is already turning it over. Angles. Possibilities. Proof. The way a strategist does when emotion gives the room a story too simple to be trusted.
Delia presses both hands to the edge of the desk. “I only heard her talking.”
Reva lets out a broken sound.
Delia looks at her sister. “I only heard her talking, Reva. I didn’t see you call. I don’t know if you did.”
The possibility should change something. Maybe for someone else, it would.
Reva’s face twists, tears cutting down both cheeks. “It’s still my fault.”
“No.” This time, I take her hand.
She grips mine hard enough to hurt.
“I talked to her,” she says. “I was talking to her. I told her things. I must have. I was little and stupid and I missed her, and I told her something that helped her find us.”
Marisol makes a wounded sound.
Reva pulls her face free from her mother’s hands, not violently, but enough to breathe without being held. “I did this.”
“No, no, you didn’t, sweet girl,” Marisol says.
“I did this.”
Delia moves.
She crosses the space between them in three quick strides and drops to her knees, shoving gently between Reva and Marisol with the complete lack of apology only a sister can manage. Marisol shifts back at once, hands falling to her lap, face stricken but yielding.
Delia takes Reva’s hands. Reva turns them over and grips back with both of hers.
“I’m sorry.” Reva’s voice breaks apart. “I’m so sorry, Delia. I’m so, so sorry I did this and Daddy was taken from you, and you were taken, and—”
“Shut up.”
Reva flinches. Delia grabs her and pulls her in.
It isn’t graceful. Their knees knock. Reva’s shoulder hits Delia’s chest. Delia winces because she’s still bruised and bandaged and probably hurting everywhere, but she holds on anyway, one hand fisting in the back of Reva’s hoodie, the other pressing her sister’s face into the hollow of her neck.
“Shut up,” Delia says again, rougher now. “Just shut up.”
Reva breaks. Noisy this time.
A sob tears out of her, and then another, and Delia holds her through it with her eyes squeezed shut and her jaw trembling. She presses her cheek to Reva’s hair like she can keep all the pieces inside by force.
“It’s not your fault,” Delia tells her.
Reva shakes her head against her.
“It’s not your fault.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
Reva sobs harder.
Delia’s face twists. “I mean—damn it. I mean, I hear you. I hear you, okay? But it wasn’t your fault.
You were four. Isabel was Isabel. Dad was the one who put phones in drawers.
Mother was the one with bloodlines and enemies.
Cal and Deacon were already making contingency plans because everyone knew Isabel was a monster before either of us knew how to tie shoes. ”
A breath that might be a laugh breaks through Shiloh’s tension. It dies quickly.
Reva clutches Delia tighter. “I thought you hated me.”
Delia’s eyes open. They are wet.
She looks over Reva’s head at nothing. “I did sometimes.”
Marisol closes her eyes.
I go still.
Delia continues before anyone can soften it. “When I was little. When I was angry. When Isabel made sure I was angry. I hated you for being dead. Then I hated myself for hating you.”
Reva’s sobs quiet into shaking breaths.
Delia looks down at her. “None of that makes a four-year-old responsible for murder.”
Reva doesn’t answer. Delia holds her anyway. The rest of us stay silent because anything we add would be too much.
For once, no man in this room tries to fix what sisters have to say to each other on the floor.
The fans drone beyond the door. Somewhere in the barroom, a cleaner rolls another cart across the floor, wheels squeaking over tile, life insisting on logistics while this family bleeds quietly in Nash’s smoke-stained office.
After a while, Reva’s breathing evens. Not calm. Reva is never calm. But she eventually becomes less ragged. Delia loosens her grip first, then immediately looks annoyed by the loss of contact, which is the most sibling thing I’ve seen from them yet.
Marisol remains on the rug a few feet away, hands folded tightly in her lap. Reva looks at her.
“I don’t know how to do this with you,” Reva says.
Marisol’s throat moves. “Neither do I. We’ll figure it out together…if that’s okay?”
Reva nods and wipes her face with both sleeves and looks embarrassed by being seen on the floor. Pride comes back into her posture by inches. That matters too.
I stand first, then offer her my hand. She takes it and lets me pull her up.
Delia rises without help and pretends it doesn’t hurt. Shiloh notices and looks away because sometimes kindness is averted eyes. Nash moves to the door, opens it, and says something low to one of the men outside.
Water. Coffee. Clean towels. Space, disguised as logistics.
Marisol stands last. She looks unsteady.
Deacon stays near enough to help and smart enough not to touch.
Nash closes the door again.
“We continue,” he says.
Reva looks up. “Now?”
His gaze rests on her face. “You don’t have to.”
She looks at Delia, then Marisol, then Deacon by the door. Her hands curl and uncurl at her sides.
“I don’t want to stop.”
I believe her. Stopping would let the guilt catch up. Planning gives it a place to stand.
Nash nods. “Then we continue.”
We return to the desk in a looser formation.
No one sits at first. The air has changed, though—it’s like we’ve all been stripped down to something more honest. Reva stays near Delia this time.
Marisol stands on Delia’s other side. Three women with the same blood and three different versions of survival in their faces.
Nash looks at Marisol. “You said the problem began with succession. Training one daughter. Selling the other.”
Marisol nods.
“Then succession is also where we break it.”
A small shiver moves through Delia, but she doesn’t look away.
Deacon’s attention stays on the map. “Isabel’s power depends on belief. Bloodline. Fear. Continuity. If she loses one, she leans on the others.”
“We make her lose all three,” Shiloh says.
His voice is soft.
Nash glances at him. “Yes.”
Reva drags in a breath. Her eyes are still red, face streaked with tears, but something has sharpened in her expression. “How?”
I move to the desk and pull the map closer.
“We don’t do it with one hit,” I say. “One hit makes her a martyr or starts a scramble. We need pressure in multiple places. Money. Communication. Loyalty. Public image. Private fear.”
Ever the strategist, laying the puzzle pieces before them. That’s what they need from me now. So I give it to them.
“Her people need to believe that she can fall before she actually does,” I continue. “The people under her need somewhere to stand when she hits the ground.”
Delia stares at the map.
Marisol’s gaze shifts to her daughter, then to me. “That will require more than your men.”
“Yes.”
Nash’s expression turns grim. “We’re going to need an army.”
For the first time since she walked into Noir, Marisol smiles. It isn’t soft. It isn’t motherly.
It is the smile of a woman who spent fifteen years watching a monster build a kingdom and memorized every door.
“Leave that to me,” she says.