He brings it to his lips. He kisses the center of my palm, right over the spot where the gun recoil hit, right where the blood was.
"It’s gone," he says against my skin. "See? It’s gone."
I look. My hand is clean. Red from the hot water and my scrubbing, but clean.
I collapse against him.
The water soaks his black t-shirt, plastering it to his muscles. I bury my face in his wet chest, sobbing. I let it all out—the terror of the drone, the fear of the dark house, the sound of the door splintering, the deafening crack of the gunshot.
Silas holds me. He doesn't shush me. He doesn't tell me to stop crying. He stands there like a rock in the middle of a river, letting my grief crash over him.
He washes my hair. His fingers are strong, massaging my scalp, grounding me. He washes my back, my arms, my legs. He is thorough, methodical, erasing the touch of the outside world.
"Why?" I ask into his wet shirt. "Why did they come? You said the Estate was safe."
"Nowhere is safe," Silas says grimly. "Safety is an illusion we buy with violence. Today, the price went up."
He turns off the water.
He grabs a thick towel and wraps me in it. He leads me out of the bathroom and over to the small bed in the corner of the room.
He sits me down.
"Stay here. I need to change."
He strips off his wet clothes, tossing them into a pile. He pulls on a pair of gray sweatpants from a drawer. He is bare-chested. The scars on his torso stand out in the stark light.
He grabs a bottle of water and hands it to me. "Drink."
I take a sip. My throat feels like sandpaper.
"Silas," I say, my voice clearer now. "The text."
He freezes, his back to me. "What text?"
"In the conservatory. Before you left. You got a text. You said... you said it was nothing. But you lied. Your eye twitched."
He turns around slowly. He leans against the metal table, crossing his arms over his chest. His expression is unreadable, a mask of stone.
"You saw the files," he says. "In my office."
"I saw them," I confirm. "I saw that you’ve been paying my father’s debts for years. I saw that you saved me from the Albanians. From the bookies."
"Then you know what kind of man your father was."
"Was?"
The word hangs in the air. Past tense.
My heart gives a painful lurch. Not of grief, exactly, but of finality.
"The text was from Nikolai," Silas says. His voice is flat, clinical. "He had Marcus. He sent a photo. He offered a trade."
I grip the edge of the mattress. "What trade?"
"Your father for you."
I close my eyes. Of course. Marcus Ross, selling me out one last time. Even at the end, I was just currency to him.
