She would’ve breathed out a sigh of relief, if she hadn’t gotten the exact same roll the night Jac died. Now those numbers felt like an omen.
“Did your family ever talk about Leah?” Harrison asked suddenly, which surprised her.
“A little. Not much. She died around when I was born.” Sophia hesitated, knowing that wasn’t what Harrison wanted to hear. “Uncle Garth talked about her. Sedric, sometimes.” But Sophia had avoided Sedric at every opportunity. Even as a teenager, he’d unnerved her. He’d looked at the whole world as though he owned it.
“When were you born?” Harrison asked.
Sophia furrowed her eyebrows. “January, Year 8.” She’d turned nineteen three weeks ago.
He made a gruff noise.
“What?” she asked.
He stared at his pistol. “If we do kill the Bargainer tonight, if youdoget your memories back...I’ve decided it would be a bigger mistake for me to keep quiet now, than it would for me to be wrong.”
His voice had a serious quality—a politician quality—even as he fidgeted his leg. Sophia stopped fidgeting hers. She stilled entirely. Her gaze dragged up from the dice on the floor to his gaze, to his green eye that matched her own, realizing what his questions meant.
“Muck,”she cursed, at the same time he blurted out, “It’s not impossible that I’m your father.”
Sophia jolted up. “No.You’re not old enough to be my father. You’re, like, barely over forty.”
“I’m thirty-seven,” he said flatly.
“I’mnotan Augustine.” Disgust boiled inside of her. Rewriting her memories of her true father didn’t bother her. Demoting Delia and Charles from siblings to cousins, honestly, relieved her. But an omerta split talent? The same talent that had gotten Jac killed? Sophia couldn’t stomach that. She couldn’tbethat.
Nostrils flaring, she whipped to face Harrison, who looked a shade of green to match his old Augustine ring. He didn’t meet her eyes.
“You’ve thought this for a while, haven’t you?” she demanded.
“Since after the election,” he admitted. “I thought giving you the omerta would clear it up—you can’t place an omerta on an Augustine. But...”
“But I might’ve bargained my talent away, and you might’ve placed an omerta on your own daughter,” Sophia deadpanned.
He cringed. “I hope I’m wrong—”
“Yeah,” she bit out. “I hope you’re wrong, too.”
“But in case I’m right, I didn’t want you to find out by remembering. I wanted a chance to...to do it right.”
“Is this what you call right?” she snapped.
Before he could respond, footsteps thundered down the hallway behind them. Sophia turned to see Grace and Roy sprinting toward them.
“The whiteboots are coming!” Grace shouted. “They’ve surrounded the building!”
Sophia turned to Harrison, the realization dawning on her. Hehadbeen waiting for someone—that someone just wasn’t the Bargainer. “What did you do?” she gasped.
“The responsible thing,” he answered wearily.
“Hector is coming?” Roy asked, his strangely perfect features sliding into a dark look of resolve. Sophia had always thought he resembled a marble statue more than a person, like he belonged in a museum.
“Don’t do that thing,” Grace warned him.
“What thing?” Roy asked.
“The hero thing.Yourthing.”
“I’m going downstairs,” he declared, pushing past, down the hallway. Grace cursed and ran after him.
