We don’t say what that means out loud. We don’t say how contact with Deacon works because it has always worked the same way—sporadic, strategic, and never for no reason. A call that comes at the wrong hour. A face in the bar for ten minutes and gone before midnight. Information traded in pieces. Favors no one names as favors.
Our estranged brother in a manner of speaking, he never cut the line completely.
None of us did. We couldn’t.
Ever looks at me. “So what exactly did she tell you, other than she wanted Midnight to kill Deacon?”
I give them the shape of it. “Sounds about the same as what she told you. Runaway story. Ex-boyfriend. Needed distance. Needed work. Most of it felt practiced.” I shiftmy weight and glance at Shiloh. “I asked if she wanted protection.”
Shiloh’s eyes lift first. Ever’s a second later.
“She said she didn’t want the strings that would come with protection,” I tell them.
Ever goes colder. Shiloh gets quieter. They both know what that kind of answer sounds like. It doesn’t come from a woman looking for a bodyguard. It comes from someone who’s built herself around the soul-deep lust for a blade and doesn’t know how to stand any other way. Someone who’s already had her trust shattered more than once and had to rebuild those walls brick by brick.
I look at Ever. “Then she got mad.”
A flicker in his eyes. He knows exactly how fast she burns when she’s cornered.
“Did she explain why she wants him killed?” Shiloh asks.
I look at him, then at Ever. I know what he’s asking. He wants to know what Reva knows. We can’t really ask that without revealing our own part in things, our own knowledge of the past.
And that’s not something we’re ready to do just yet.
“Not in full. She said she’d been hurt, and she wanted to take care of him before he decided to come back.”
Ever’s jaw locks. I can almost see the memory behind his eyes, the same one scraping at mine.
A job we refused to take. Orders we should never have been given in the first place. A family in the wind. A child—two children, actually—too young for the punishment attached to their family’s name.
Deacon making a choice that saved us and damned him in ways I still don’t think he anticipated. Or maybe he did, and that was the point of it all. That he’d be the damned, and not us.
I don’t hand them that thought. I keep it in my own mouth and taste the bitterness of it.
“Here’s the thing…this isn’t just about Deacon,” I say.
Ever nods once, slow. “No.”
Shiloh leans forward in the chair, humor finally gone for good. The cat gives a protesting mew. “It’s the Syndicate.”
Ever huffs. “Give me that thing.”
Without waiting for permission, he takes the cat from Shiloh’s hands and tucks it into his T-shirt, against his chest. The kitten pops his head up through the neck, nuzzles into Ever’s skin, and goes to sleep within seconds. I shake my head. Fucking saps.
I pull my focus back to the matter at hand. Mother Superior’s name doesn’t need saying. We know who the Syndicate really is.
I start pacing before I mean to—two steps, turn, two steps back. The office isn’t big enough for what I’m thinking through, but movement keeps me from putting my fist through the shelving.
Reva is under my roof. She came here hunting a man tied to our past. She’s asking questions in a place built on walls and favors and old loyalties, and she doesn’t know how many wires she’s already brushing with bare hands, just waiting to spark to life and end hers.
She has no idea the frail margins she’s dodging. If she keeps pulling, she won’t just find Deacon. She’ll find the rest of it.
And the rest of it will not leave her breathing out of mercy.
I stop pacing and plant both palms on the desk. “We keep her alive.”
Ever’s answer comes fast. “So we keep her away from Deacon.”
