Matty passes me on his way to the door. He stops. Those dark, careful eyes settle on my face and stay there for a moment.
"Are you okay?"
It surprises me so much I almost don't answer. I nod because I don't have words for anything more than that. He holds my gaze one second longer, checking, and then he leaves.
Then it's just me and Reilan and Frank Murphy, who is not going to say anything to anyone ever again.
I turn around.
Reilan looks terrible. The color has gone out of him in a way I haven't seen since our mother was dying—that particular gray that settles into a face when something large and irreversible has happened, and the body knows it before the words come. He's standing by the chair with his arms loose at his sides and his face open in a way I've rarely seen from him, like he's too far past composure to close anything off. That frightens me more than the gray does. Reilan closes everything off. Our father trained it into both of us. Feeling something and showing it are two separate acts, and showing it is a choice, and Reilan never makes that choice without reason. He's not choosing it now.
"Tell me it isn't true," I say.
His jaw tightens.
"Just say it. Three words." I hold his gaze. "Tell me it isn't you."
He opens his mouth.
He closes it.
The space where those words should be is the loudest thing in the room. Louder than the gunshot.
My throat tightens. I look away from him and look at the window, at the dark garden beyond the glass, and I breathe. In and out. I count the panes. Six. I count the seconds until my hands are steady.
Behind me, Reilan says my name. Very quiet. The way he used to say it when I was fifteen and crying in the back garden, and he'd come looking for me. He always came looking.
"Don't." My voice comes out flat. "Don't say my name right now."
He goes quiet.
I give the silence what it needs. I let myself feel the whole of it, the cold in my chest, the image of Reilan's face when he couldn't make himself say three words and then I turn back around.
"Get out of this room," I say.
"Aoife, just let me—"
"I can't look at you right now." My voice doesn't crack. I'm grateful for that much. "Go back to wherever you're sleeping. Don't come near me tonight."
He looks at me for a long moment. There's something in his face I won't examine yet, not in this room with Frank Murphy three feet away. Then he nods once and goes.
The door closes.
I'm alone.
I stand in the middle of the room, and I breathe. I focus on the grain of the mahogany panelling, the way the chandelierlight sits on the table. Anything with edges and weight. Anything that holds still.
My brother.
My brother, who sat with me the night our father told us about the marriage contract, in the back garden, and held my hand without saying a word until I stopped shaking. My brother, who reworked our father's alliance structure last year, quietly, painstakingly, so that I would have more standing in negotiations and not just a ceremonial seat at the table. My brother, who has always put himself between me and the worst of it.
Who gave the Bratva our location.
I make myself say it plainly, in my own head. Not as a question. As a fact that needs to be looked at clearly before I can decide what to do with it.
Then I leave the room.
The hallway is empty, but I can hear William and Aidan in the kitchen at the back of the house, their voices low and contained. I move toward them because standing still isn't something I can do right now.
