He isn’t now.
Kinsella exhales hard through his nose, and his eyes shine. He doesn’t look at me at first. He looks at Roarke, at the man who enforced my lines and held the pier when others wavered.
“I didn’t call them,” Kinsella says, voice rough. “You have my word.”
I believe him.
Patrick doesn’t share information like this with middlemen before he makes a point. This wasn’t a leak from Kinsella’s office. Kinsella wipes at his face with the back of his hand, and when he looks up at me, there are tears in his eyes. Not hysterical. Not weak. Just the kind that come when something breaks that can’t be rebuilt.
“He stood in front of me,” Kinsella says quietly. “Pulled one of mine down when the first shots hit.”
I nod once. “He didn’t have to,” Kinsella adds, voice cracking just slightly before he steadies it again. “He could’ve stayed behind cover.”
Roarke never stayed behind cover.
Kinsella’s mouth shakes. “You fold this pier in,” he says, and his tone has changed now, stripped of negotiation. “You do it fully. No half-measures. You want it? It’s yours.”
“It already was,” I reply.
“Then make it mean something,” he says, and his eyes fill again, tears spilling over despite his effort to hold them back. “Don’t let him die on ground that goes back to being a loophole.”
I hold his gaze. “It won’t,” I say.
Behind us, my men are already moving with grim efficiency. Weapons collected. Perimeter locked down. Injured loaded into vehicles. Two of the younger ones look shaken, their hands unsteady as they wipe blood from their sleeves.
Roarke had been their anchor.
He’d trained half of them.
He’d never raised his voice without reason.
And now he’s lying on a pier I claimed ten minutes before the first shot was fired.
I crouch again briefly and close his eyes with my thumbs. It’s a small gesture, almost archaic, but it matters. The salt air moves across the yard, and the smoke thins into the harbor wind.
I stand.
The wound in my side throbs harder now, each heartbeat sending a dull ache through my ribs, but it’s nothing compared to the hollow space opening in my chest. It feels like something fundamental has been removed, like a beam pulled from the center of a structure I thought was stable.
“Lock it down,” I say.
My voice is low, but it carries. There’s no shouting in it. No rage. “No trucks leave without clearance. Every manifest reviewed twice. Cameras up on the east roof by nightfall. And I want names.”
They nod.
No one questions me.
Kinsella rises slowly beside me. “You’ll have my cooperation,” he says, and there’s no hesitation now. “Fully.”
He swallows once, hard, then looks at Roarke again. “I’ll attend,” he adds quietly. “When you bury him.”
I nod once.
The drive back to the estate is silent. No one turns on the radio. No one speaks unless it’s necessary. Roarke’s body is in the second vehicle, and his absence fills the space heavier than any presence could.
I sit in the back of the SUV, jacket pressed against the wound at my side, and stare out at the city as we pass through it, ignoring the burn in my eyes. The sun is lowering over the water, turning the skyline gold in a way that feels almost obscene against the gray of the day.
He should be in the front seat, making some dry comment about escalation. When the gates open and the estate comes into view, warm lights glowing in the windows, everything looks disgustingly normal. I don’t stop walking until I reach Riley’s workstation. She stands as soon as she sees me.
