"He hurt our daughter. Everything after this is justified."
"I know that, too."
"Whatever it takes, Isabelle. Whatever it costs. I'm ending him."
I squeeze his hand. "We're ending him. Together."
His smile is sharp. Dangerous. Mine.
"Together," he agrees.
Outside the window, Manhattan fades into highways, into suburbs, into the empty stretches of Long Island, where the rich hide from their problems. Ahead of us, the safe house waits—clean, secure, free from Matthew's surveillance.
Behind us, the city holds its breath.
The Wolf is hunting.
And he's not alone anymore.
20
Izzy
We've been backin Brooklyn for three days—long enough to establish that Matthew's surveillance is dead, not long enough to feel safe.
"Your mother's at her townhouse. Alone."
Wesley's voice through the phone. Three words that make my fingers tighten around the mug of coffee I'm not drinking.
I'm standing in Sergei's kitchen, wearing his shirt from yesterday and absolutely nothing else, staring at my laptop screen. Bank transfers. Hotel receipts. Phone records spanning fifteen goddamn years.
My mother and Uncle Matthew.
Fifteen years of hotel rooms while Dad worked late, completely oblivious.
"She’s alone as in 'Matthew just left' or alone as in ‘staff dismissed, about to flee the country?'"
"First one. He left an hour ago. Staff's still there." Papers rustle—Wesley's always rustling papers like he's auditioning for a noir detective film. "Izzy, I found the smoking gun. The Cayman account I told you about—the one that paid Olegov?"
"Matthew's shell company. I remember."
"It's not just Matthew's." He pauses, letting that land. "Joint account. Both their names. Catherine Davenport and Matthew Ashford. Two million bucks wired to Ivan Olegov five days before the explosion."
I set down the mug before I drop it.
I've known Matthew killed Dad since Wesley traced the Olegov payment weeks ago. I've known Mother was sleeping with him since I watched them at Circo, her hand on his arm like she had every right to touch him. I thought she was complicit in the cover-up—guilty of betrayal, guilty of choosing her lover over her daughter.
But I thought she was a bystander. Willfully blind, maybe. Morally bankrupt, definitely.
Her name on that account changes everything.
She didn't just cheat on my father. She helped fund his assassination.
"I'm going to talk to her."
Silence. The kind that screams,this is a spectacularly bad idea.
"Isabelle—"
