My mind does something strange then. Not a thought. Not a memory. Something faster than either. Like a circuit blowing.
Jason's back. The scars Frank put there and called lessons.
Aidan's voice on the phone the night I relapsed, flat and careful the way it gets only when he's terrified.
Matty sitting very still at the kitchen table when we told him. Not crying. Just going somewhere behind his eyes that none of us could reach.
My father's office. The door I pushed open. The light from the window. The way the room looked completely normal until it didn't.
Him hanging there.
The rope.
I pull the gun from my waistband and shoot Frank in the head.
The sound in the room is enormous and then, immediately, isn't. Frank tilts sideways in the chair and doesn't right himself. The wall behind him is ruined.
Nobody moves. Not for a full three seconds.
Then Aidan is on his feet.
"What the FUCK." He's staring at the wall, at Frank, at me, his hands out at his sides. He says the words again, quieter this time, and the quiet is worse than the shout. Then: "Raven loves this room."
I put the gun back. "I'll have the wall replastered."
"That is not—" He stops. Starts again. "William. What did you just do?"
"What needed doing."
Matty hasn't moved. He's looking at Frank with those dark eyes, and I can't read what's behind them. He was never disturbed by violence. Violence never cost him. What came before it always did. I won't ask what he's thinking. He won't say.
Reilan makes a sound across the room, something low and controlled, and when I look at him, his face has gone the colour of old plaster. His gaze moves between Frank and me.
"Why?" The word comes out carefully, like he is checking the ground before he puts his weight on it. "Had he betrayed you already?"
"No," I say.
Silence.
"He hadn't done anything yet." I keep my eyes on Reilan. "But he would have. That's who Frank is. I gave him the one thing he's wanted his entire life and watched what he did with it." I glance at him. "Three minutes in that chair and he was already thinking past this room. The shares were never real. The paperwork was never going through. I needed his intelligence, and I needed him in this room." I look back at Reilan. "He was useful. He isn't anymore."
The room stays quiet.
Aidan is looking at me with an expression I've never seen from him. Not anger. Something on the other side of it.
"You let him believe it," he says. "The whole time."
"Yes."
He sits down, puts his elbows on his knees, and looks at the floor. I let him have it.
I look at each face in the room in turn. Aidan. Matty. Reilan. Aoife.
"There's something else," I say. "This is why I needed everyone here." The room goes very still.
"The Bratva knows we're alive. They knew before the house. They knew exactly where to find us." I pause. "Someone gave them that information." Nobody moves. "The attack wasn't random, and it wasn't gathered intelligence. Someone who knew the location of the safe house told them where we were." I look at them. All of them. I let the words land. "Someone in this room is the mole."
Reilan's face changes.
