Vale stretches, sated by the tension, bored of the logistics. “So we’re all agreed,” he says. “We go watch the snake. If the snake hisses, we cut the head. If he keeps charming, we wait and slit his throat later. That sums it up. A family outing! How glorious. Clean, neat, little family outing, I’ll wear something nice.”
Ash rolls his eyes. “This isn’t a joke, Mateo.”
“It could be,” Vale hums. “If we survive.”
Rook straightens, eyes on each of them in turn, then back to me. “We vote,” he says. “Saint?”
Saint inclines his head. “Yes.”
“Ash?”
Ash hesitates. His jaw tightens. His gaze flicks to me, and I can read the war in it — fear and devotion and calculation. “Yes,” he says finally, grudging. “With the conditions we set.”
“Wraith?”
“Yes,” Wraith says, instantly.
He doesn’t look at Rook when he says it. He looks at me. Part of me knows it’s because he believes I deserve this. The other? It’s penance for pulling the trigger. Tears sting the back of my eyes, but I keep steady as they agree one by one.
“Vale?”
Vale tips his glass toward me in salute. “Obviously yes.”
Rook nods once. “You already know mine is a yes.”
Then he turns to me. “And yours?”
My heart hammers. I taste copper and heat. “Yes,” I say. “We go.”
The decision settles in the room like a seal pressed into wax. Finished. Irrevocable.
The last of the tension bleeds from my spine, leaving something else in its place. Steadiness. Focus. Purpose. I didn’t realize how badly I needed that until it’s sitting in my bones.
Rook exhales through his nose, then nods toward Ash. “Take her after we’re done eating. Show her what you think she needs to know.”
Ash dips his head once. “Yeah.”
“Saint,” Rook continues. “Get us eyes on the site. Quiet. I don’t want Syndicate even smelling we’re watching.”
Saint answers with a lazy salute that shouldn’t look reverent and somehow does.
“Vale, Wraith — full sweep of gear. We go light, not loud. If someone other than us pulls a trigger, I want that man carried to the river and I want paperwork saying he drowned.”
Vale grins. “With pleasure.”
Wraith just nods, already in the mission in his head.
Rook looks back to me last. Always letting his attention feel like the closing of a hand around the back of my neck. “Finish eating,” he says. “You’ll need the strength.”
My mouth curves. “Worried I’ll faint?”
“I’ve seen you nearly fall over from a half-glass of adrenaline,” he says calmly. “So yes. Sit. Eat your food like a good girl. Then we make you lethal.”
I don’t blush easily. Never have. But somehow, with them? I do now.
Vale lets out a quiet, delighted, “Oh, she liked that.”
“Mateo.” Rook’s tone sharpens, but there’s no real bite.
