They sat across from each other, the silence stretching between them.
Mary-Ann didn’t ask him to explain. Not at first. Instead, she stood and crossed the room to a small table beside the bookshelf. From beneath a stack of folded reports, she drew a slip of paper and handed it to him.
A symbol was scrawled in the corner, a black raven stamped onto the back of a shipping invoice.
Quinton went still. Not surprised. Not confused. Resigned.
“You know what this is,” she said.
He didn’t deny it. “Yes.”
“What does it mean?”
He hesitated.
“Tell me, Quinton.”
His jaw tightened. “It’s the mark of the Order of Shadows. A syndicate that has been operating through ports and politics for decades. Maybe longer.”
She stared at him. The air between them seemed to constrict.
“You’ve known,” she said. “Since when?”
“Since just after I returned,” he admitted. “Barrington briefed me on it. But I’d heard whispers, even before—”
She flinched like he’d struck her. “And you said nothing.”
“I couldn’t. It’s not just dangerous, Mary-Ann. It’s a web. A world of its own.”
Her voice broke. “I asked you to trust me. I trustedyoueven when I shouldn’t have. Even when you walked into my house like a ghost and gave me nothing but riddles.”
“I was trying to protect you.”
Her hands were trembling now. “I have walked into warehouses alone. I’ve had my room searched, my letters intercepted, my life rearranged. And I did it all thinking I had no one. No allies. No truth.”
Quinton stood, but she rose with him, her eyes bright with tears she refused to shed.
“You let me carry it alone,” she said, her voice hoarse. “You knew what Rodney was. You knew what I was walking into, and you let me believe it was just my imagination.”
“I was trying to find a way to stop it without putting you at risk.”
“No,” she whispered. “You were trying to find a way to stop it without needing me.”
His shoulders dropped. “That’s not fair.”
“But it’s true.”
She turned away, pressing a hand against the mantel as if to steady herself. She didn’t want to cry. Not now. Not when her clarity had finally sharpened into something usable.
“I loved you,” she said. “I never stopped. I held onto you for three years, through silence, through grief, through hope. And when you came back, I thought I had been given a second chance. But I wasn’t. I was given a shadow. A man who looked like you but didn’t know who I was anymore.”
He crossed the room. “I do know—”
“No, you don’t,” she said, pulling away. “Because if you had, you would have come to me with the truth. Not when it was safe. But when it mattered.”
“Mary-Ann,” he said her name softly, but she shook her head.
“You don’t get to call me that right now.”
