I stared at the table, at the pastries we hadn't touched, at my brothers sitting around me like we were kids again plotting some half-baked scheme.
Except this wasn't half-baked.
This was real.
Then Gideon's voice cut through, quiet and cold.
"There's one more thing."
The way he said it made my skin prickle.
I looked up. "What?"
He exchanged glances with the others. No one wanted to say it.
"Victoria," Gideon said finally. "The woman from The Vanguard."
"What about her?"
His jaw tightened. "We think she's the one who killed Mom."
The world stopped.
Not metaphorically. Not dramatically.
It just ... stopped.
I heard the words. Understood them. But my brain refused to process what they meant.
"What?" My voice came out flat. Hollow.
"We don't have proof," Jacob said quickly. "Not yet. But Dad's been looking into it. The timing lines up. The methods. Everything points to?—"
"No." I stood so fast the chair scraped loud against the floor. "No. Mom died of a heart attack."
"That's what we thought," Caleb said quietly. "But there are ways to make it look natural. Ways to?—"
"Stop."
They did.
I stood there, hands clenched into fists, every muscle locked tight.
My mother. Lila Voss.
The woman who'd held us together when Dad vanished. Who'd loved us fiercely, completely, even when we made it hard. Who'd sat with me on those sleepless nights and told me stories about bread rolls and family and believing in something bigger than grief.
Dead.
Not from illness. Not from time.
Murdered.
By a woman who was still out there. Walking around. Breathing.
The rage that rose up wasn't hot.
It was cold. Precise. The kind that came from years of training, years of learning how to channel fury into something useful.
