“No one did anything without you knowing it.”
“I didn’t authorize it. I swear to God. And the lieutenants who were involved with this, they are no longer walking on this earth… needless to say, perhaps, but…” He paused. “They were handled as soon as I was made aware.”
Nicholas remembered something about that. He was in jail, and he remembered learning that two high-level lieutenants in the organization were taken out. Two lieutenants who Nicholas had represented at trial years earlier. They had been tried for burglary and extortion. Nicholas had gotten them cleared.
This was why he thought that Frank had mentioned theirendingto him—in the way that Frank relayed these things. The cleaned-up language: they were no longer with the organization. Due to insubordination. How many years after Kate’s death did Frank share this? Five years, close to six. Was that how long before Frank knew?
“Someone authorized it, Frank. What happened to my daughter. Someone had to authorize it. These men wouldn’t have done this without the explicit blessing of someone in the family.”
Frank looked at him, and Nicholas saw it—the way we see things in the people we know best—or, at least, that we’ve known the longest. Even the things (especially the things) that we wish we could unsee.
“She was just a kid herself, Nick…” He shakes his head. “She just authorized them to scare Kate, not to hurt her. Certainly not to kill her.”
“Quinn?”
Nicholas asked it as a question. But he had his answer. He started to think that maybe he always had the answer. The way we know things before we are willing to know them. The way we feel the preliminary pain we aren’t ready to acknowledge yet.
“We don’t control what our children do. I don’t need to tell you that. And Quinn… she wasn’t thinking clearly. She was too wrapped up in her own pain. Her own anger. Her fears that our family was being threatened.”
Nicholas nodded. He didn’t doubt that. As though that was what mattered now. All that mattered was this: Kate was walking down the street, eager to get home to her daughter, and then, silence. Because of how Nicholas led his life. Because of whom he’d invited into it. That was the point. That was the only point.
“Nick, I promise you on my own children, I did not know then. I didn’t know for a long time. I’ve spent my life sorry about that.”
“Not good enough.”
“I know.”
“I don’t care what you know.”
Nicholas got up to leave.
“We’re done.”
In Death, I Am Reborn
Nicholas hits the ground hard.
It vibrates off my skin, the ringing from the shot. I feel it in my ears, everything echoing loudly. I can’t hear anything outside of that echo. The world spins fast around me—the pressure destabilizing—pushing me into a tunnel, toward the only thing that matters: Nicholas on the ground, bleeding.
I drop to the floor, so I can study him. So I can ascertain where exactly he was hit and how to quickly help.
He is looking up at me, stunned but conscious. My hands cup his head, which is clean, unbuttoning his suit jacket, palming his chest. Which is when I see the red spreading out near his neck, coming from the top of his shoulder.
I rip open his shirt and reach for a napkin. A cloth napkin. I hold it against the top of his shoulder and apply pressure.
“You’re okay,” I say.
It’s a statement more than a question because it won’t stop coming at me—how much I need it to be true.
I pull the napkin away and look at the wound. There doesn’t seem to be a bullet lodged there. The skin cut through. Just a slick and awful graze. And still blood colors the napkin, sticks hard to all my fingers.
Nicholas looks up at Frank. “Are you insane?” he asks.
Frank is standing over Nicholas and me, the gun still in his hand. It’s down by his side, but still in his hand. Still cocked.
“You two walk in here speaking about mutually assured self-destruction, but I’m the insane one?”
This is when I stand up. And, with everything I’ve got, I turn to face Frank, holding on to his gaze. Not cowering. Not cowering even with that gun still cocked. Quinn and Teddy standing by their father, the security team ready to follow their boss’s cue.
