“This is different,” I mutter. “With her.” The words come out quieter than I intend. Sharper, too. Like they’ve been sitting behind my teeth long enough to develop an edge.
Something shifts on Ian’s end. The easy sarcasm drains out of his voice, replaced by something more careful. “Believe me,” he says, “I know. Which is why you need someone watching your back now more than ever.”
“You opened the door.”
“Fuck yes, I did.”
The seasons room. Her face in amber light. Head tilted back, throat bared, like she forgot for a moment that she was supposed to be afraid. I built it for no one and told myself that for a long time. She stood under it for ten minutes and made me a liar.
“That room wasn’t for her.”
“You sure about that?”
I don’t answer, and the silence stretches. Ian lets it.
“You overstepped,” I add.
“She was deteriorating.”
“She was fine.”
Ian exhales hard, something between a laugh and disbelief. “She baked enough to feed a militia and sat on the hallway floor talking to a locked door.”
The image lands with uncomfortable precision. I hadn’t been in the room for that. I’d seen it on the feed—her back against the wall, knees pulled up, speaking quietly to the wood like it might eventually get tired of staying shut. I’d watched it for longer than was necessary.
Ian continues, “You isolate someone long enough, they fracture. And fractured people make unpredictable decisions.”
“Stop preaching.”
“A mentally stable Sophia is easier to protect.”
I lean back in the chair, staring at the ceiling. The room is dark except for the blue-gray light of the monitors across the desk, four screens casting their pale glow across the walls. The cut in my palm splits slightly as I brace against the armrest. “You don’t get to make executive calls about her.”
“I do when you stop thinking like a tactician and start thinking like?—”
“Finish that fucking sentence.”
He doesn’t.
I shift the phone to my other ear, patience thinning to something close to wire. “Did you take care of it like I asked?”
“Yup.” The shift is immediate—business, clean and efficient. “It’s like he never existed. And for the record? You owe me new boots. And a therapist. Took me hours to bag all that.”
Blood on concrete. The particular sound of a joint separating. His breathing going wet and then—not. He didn’t recognize me. Even if my face weren’t painted, he still wouldn’t have. Men like him don’t look at what isn’t performing for them.
“Fucker had it coming.”
“Most people just shoot a guy,” Ian says dryly. “You dismantled him. Were you trying to send a message, or just working through something?”
“Both.”
No hesitation.
He hums under his breath like he expected that. “How long do we have until she finds out?”
Her timing is always theatrical. Her cruelty always staged for maximum damage. I know this the way I know the layout of a room I was locked in—not because I studied it. Because I had no choice. She’ll want an audience. She’ll want Sophia to hear it in a way that can’t be taken back.
“It was staged,” I mutter into the receiver. “Everything. She wanted me to find out they got to him.”
