“Hit in a parking garage. Execution style. The news called it a robbery, but the report says there was nothing missing. There were just two bullets to the back of the head.Wethink it was a mob hit. Or maybe something to do with the Ponzi scheme. He’d made a lot of enemies.”
I felt the edges of my vision go white, the way it sometimes did when I’d danced too long without water, when my bloodsugar would crater and the world would shrink to a single, ringing note.
I didn’t cry. I didn’t scream. I didn’t do anything but breathe, slow and careful, until the feeling passed.
“I should feel something,” I said after a long while. “I should at least want to cry over the death of my parent. But I don’t.”
Jess moved off the table, then knelt in front of me. “That’s okay.”
“I mean, I’m sure he didn’t cry for me when he sold me to a monster.” My lips twitched, a ghost of a smile. “Guess karma got the last word, after all.”
He looked up at me, eyes full of something that wasn’t pity, wasn’t sorrow. It was just real. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” I said. “I’m not.”
We sat there like that, frozen. The sun broke through a cloud and lit the room, warming my bare feet. I pressed them against the tile just to remind myself I was still here, still alive, and not just some ghost sitting here.
Jess ran his thumb along my knuckles, slow and steady, not forcing anything.
When I finally looked at him, I could see the struggle on his face. He wanted to fix this, but there was nothing to fix. All he could do was wait until the ice inside me melted, until my blood started moving again.
“Thank you for telling me yourself,” I said. “I would have hated to find out from the news.”
He nodded, like he didn’t trust himself to speak.
I closed my eyes, let the sunlight pour over my eyelids, and imagined a world where the dead stayed dead, where the only monsters were the kind you could outrun, or outlast, or out-love.
I opened my eyes, and he was still there. Solid. Unyielding. Still my wolf.
“I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now,” I said.
He gave me a sad smile. “Whatever you want.”
I nodded, and for the first time in my life, I believed it might actually be true.
“We need to talk about next steps,” he said, settling on the edge of the sofa. His hands flexed, restless, then stilled as he met my gaze. “First priority is getting to your sister. Bronc says the odds are good Steiner’s already got teams looking for her.”
The name landed like a fist to the ribs. “So she’s in danger,” I said.
“She’s not safe,” Jess agreed. “But we’re better. Wrecker and Parker are on it. They’re trying to get a trace on your mom in Paris. Menace has contacts there, being a royal and all.” He paused. “It’s possible they know someone is after them and they’re running.”
My pulse stuttered, then evened out. I tried to recall the last time I’d talked to my mom. It was a voice memo, not a call—her voice disguised, heavy with code words. I’d deleted it a minute later, like I always did. She’d said, “Your sister is painting now. She’s got a good studio and friends she trusts. Don’t worry about us. We love you forever.” Then, it was gone.
“Could she be hiding?” I asked. “I mean, Mom was always good at that sort of thing. She made it through the IRS scandal, the pack betrayal, all of it. She could vanish if she wanted.”
Jess nodded. “If she’s trying, she’s doing a decent job. But we have a couple of advantages Steiner doesn’t.”
He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t have to.
I chewed on my thumbnail, then stopped. “What do you need from me?”
“Any way to contact her, any numbers you remember, any old passwords or codes. Even if it’s just a maybe.”
I shook my head, frustrated. “At Eyrie, they changed my phone every week. Sometimes twice. Steiner’s people monitored every call, every text, every breath I took online. The onlynumber I ever really memorized was the one I got for my sixteenth birthday. It doesn’t even work anymore.”
Jess leaned in, eyes sharp. “You sure?”
I thought for a minute, then closed my eyes and let my brain flicker back through the years. “It was a 713 number. Then they changed the area code, I think. It was the only one Mom ever called directly.”
