When the food arrives forty minutes later, Minxy opens a box like she’s unwrapping treasure. The second she bites into a crab rangoon, her eyes go wide.
“Oh my God,” she chokes. “Why did Mom say this was garbage? This is amazing.”
Silas lifts a container. “She lies. Frequently.”
“She’s a bitch,” Minxy says, then freezes like she’s broken a rule.
Talon stares at her. Then he bursts into laughter that sounds too sharp and too relieved. “Say it again,” he tells her.
Minxy smiles crookedly. “She’s a bitch.”
Gideon raises his carton like a toast. “Here’s to honesty.”
We settle around the coffee table, eating straight from containers. No plates, no rules; it’s messy and loud and a little chaotic.
Minxy relaxes. Her shoulders lower. Her face loses its pinched look. She curls her legs under her and starts demolishing dumplings like she’s on a mission.
Halfway through dinner, she goes quiet. Not the shut-down quiet. The processing kind.
I put my carton down. “What’s going on in that head?”
She swallows, wipes her mouth, and looks at all of us in turn.
“I want to tell you what happened,” she says. “Why she sent me to that prison of a school.”
Talon sets his food aside instantly. “You don’t have to tonight. You’re safe. There’s no rush.”
She shakes her head. “I don’t want to keep this secret anymore.”
Silas sits forward. Gideon pushes his food away too.
I nod. “Okay. Whenever you’re ready.”
Minxy takes a breath so deep it shudders on the way out.
“It was Todd,” she begins. “The night…” She stops, blinking hard. “The night he disappeared.”
Talon’s jaw clenches. He looks like he might break the chopsticks in his hand.
Minxy keeps going.
“I heard them arguing,” she says. “Mom and Todd. She was yelling about money. Todd said something about being tired of cleaning up her messes.” She picks at a loose thread on her sleeve. “Mom said if he didn’t sign the papers, she’d lose everything. Todd told her to let him handle it, but she said she didn’t trust him to ‘finish it cleanly.’ They went back and forth and then…” She swallows hard. “I heard a crash, then something fell. Something big. And then nothing.”
Silas goes still.
Gideon’s eyes sharpen like a blade catching light.
Talon breathes through his nose in a ragged rhythm.
Minxy’s voice breaks again. Her hands tremble as she grips her sweatshirt.
“Ten minutes later, Mom walked into my room. Calm. She told me Todd had an accident. She said he’d been drinking and slipped. She told me not to go downstairs. She said I didn’t need to see him like that.”
Talon’s breath leaves him in a silent, violent exhale.
Gideon rises and goes to the window like he needs to burn holes in the dark.
Silas presses his knuckles to his mouth.
