There was a long silence, then the sound of footsteps moving away. Vivi waited, wondering if she should turn back, when she heard Elliot’s harsh whisper.
“How long do we keep doing this, Davey? How long before we tell them what’s really happening?”
“What do you want me to do? Tell Dad that Cade’s working with Praetorian? That his nephew has gone rogue?”
“He deserves to know?—”
“And it would destroy him,” Davey cut in. “Him, Uncle Cam, all of them. We handle this ourselves. We fix it before they ever need to know.”
The silence that followed was heavy. Vivi took a step forward, deciding to find another route back to Dom’s room, when she heard Elliot sigh.
“Someone’s coming.”
She froze, then forced herself to round the corner casually, as if she hadn’t heard a thing. Davey and Elliot stood facingeach other in the corridor, tension radiating between them. Both turned to look at her, expressions shifting to careful neutrality.
For a moment, nobody spoke. Vivi met Davey’s gaze steadily, refusing to look away first. She could practically see the calculations happening behind his eyes—how much had she heard? What would she do with the information?
“Vivi,” he acknowledged finally with a slight nod.
“Davey. Elliot.” She kept walking, not slowing her pace. “I’m heading back to check on Dom.”
They didn’t try to stop her. She could feel their eyes on her back as she continued down the hallway, her mind spinning with what she’d overheard. Cade working with Praetorian. Secrets layered on secrets, all in the name of protection.
She spent the rest of the evening in Dom’s room, watching him sleep after his parents left. The conversation she’d overheard played on repeat in her mind. Davey’s conviction that his family needed to be protected from the truth. The cost of that protection.
Dom had been doing the same thing for years—keeping their past, their relationship, this whole life, from his family. Protecting them from knowledge that might hurt them. And she had done the same with her own parents, crafting careful half-truths and omissions until the wall of secrets between them was so high she couldn’t see over it anymore.
She pulled out her phone and stared at it, thumb hovering over her dad’s contact. It was past midnight in New Orleans. They’d be asleep. She should wait until morning.
But if she waited, she might lose her nerve.
She hit the call button before she could talk herself out of it. The phone rang once, twice, three times. She was about to hang up when her dad’s voice, thick with sleep but instantly alert, came through.
“Vivi? Is everything alright?”
Vivi took a deep breath. “No, Daddy. It’s not. I need to tell you and Mama something about Sabin. About both of us, actually.” She glanced at Dom, still asleep, his face relaxed for the first time in days. “It’s a long story, and you’re not going to like a lot of it. But I need your help.”
There was a brief pause, then the rustle of bedsheets as her dad presumably sat up. “Mais, chérie, I knew something was wrong. Your mama said I was being foolish, but I knew. You tell me everything, from the beginning, and we figure it out together, us.”
twenty-six
Three steps forward,two steps back.
That was the pattern of Sabin’s recovery over the following weeks. Days of clarity followed by hours of conditioning. Breakthroughs followed by setbacks. The specialists kept adjusting their approach—trying new cognitive exercises, different medication combinations, even experimental neural stimulation techniques.
Through it all, Vivi remained constant. So did Dom.
On the bad days, when Sabin looked at her with cold, empty eyes and demanded to be released to “complete his mission,” Dom was there with a steady hand on her shoulder and quiet conviction that this wasn’t the end of the story.
On the good days, when Sabin recognized her instantly and asked about their parents or reminisced about old jobs they’d pulled, the sterile hospital room felt almost normal for a few precious hours.
Today was a good day. Sabin sat propped up in his hospital bed, restraints removed, eyes clear. His smile was tentative, like he wasn’t quite sure he remembered how it worked, but it was real as he listened to Vivi’s stories about their childhood. Thespecialists called it “memory anchoring,” this practice of sharing stories from his past.
“—and then you tried to convince Mama that the crawfish had climbed out of the pot themselves.” Vivi watched Sabin’s face for any flicker of recognition. “She was so mad she chased you around the yard with a wooden spoon.”
“Did she catch me?” he asked.
“Eventually. But she couldn’t stay mad when you gave her those puppy-dog eyes and said you were just trying to save the poor crawfish souls.”
