Sinclair watched the whole thing. Watched Ignacio thrash. Watched him go limp against the restraints. And Sinclair started to sweat harder—thick beads rolling down his face like he was melting from the inside out.
Legend stepped forward, rope still dangling from his hand, and nodded once at AB.
“Go,” Legend said.
AB didn’t need more. He launched into questioning like a surgeon dissecting a corpse—precise, merciless.
“What method first?” AB asked. “Earliest point of contact. How did they recruit you?”
“I wasn’t—I didn’t— they approached my firm, not me personally?—”
“Bullshit,” Legend snapped. “You just admitted you were already working with them when Grace’s sister started digging.”
Sinclair flinched. “I—fine—fine—there was a drop box in Miami. At first. Cash-in, instructions-out. Happy?”
“Next,” AB demanded. “Phones. Codes. Names. Every intermediary. Every hotel. Every flight. No skipping.”
They tore him apart. Piece by piece. Contradiction by contradiction.
Sinclair answered too fast sometimes—too defensive other times. Legend called him out, AB dissected every excuse, Voodoowatched for lies like weighing each answer as if he needed to test it for veracity. Maybe he was.
Bones left them to it, he’d moved to stand with me and when he slid an arm around me and rested a hand on my hip, I leaned back into him. The shaking was still there, inside my skin. I shivered and trembled below the ice. Like a rock, steady and true, Bones stayed with me. He didn’t take over or redirect. If anything, he seemed to be waiting for a word whether it was from the guys or from me, I wasn’t sure.
But it wasn’t until Legend asked, “When was the last time you heard from them?” that something in Sinclair shifted.
“A month ago,” he whispered. “Before… before everything with my wife.”
The mention of her hit me like a gut punch. Hiswife.
His wife who’d disappeared,leaving bloody sheets and a story no one believed.
Legend’s eyes narrowed. AB paused mid-scroll.
Sinclair hugged himself, chest shaking. “They said— they said she’d gotten too curious. That she’d asked questions about my travel schedule. My clients. My—my files. They said she needed to be removed for her own good.”
He said it like he expected sympathy. Like he was the one who’d been wronged.
And suddenly something ugly and sharp twisted through me.
How many people had he sacrificed?How many lives had he fed into this machine because it was easier for him? More profitable?
And if he’d let them erase his wife?—
The realization hit me like the floor dropped out beneath my feet.
“Wait,” I said, the word cracking through the room.
All four men froze.
I straightened, leaving the shelter of Bones’ embrace to move closer to Sinclair. Everything inside me just burned. We’d thought they took his wife to punish him, but it sounded more like they were cleaning up his mess.
“Was Amorette the first time you asked them to clean up something for you?”
Sinclair didn’t hesitate. Didn’t even think. “No.”
The instant the word left his mouth, he knew—he knew—he’d damned himself.
Because all that earlier shock, all the surprise, all the denial. Lies. He’d done this before. More than once. My nails bit into my palms.
