Her jaw tightened and her hand closed into a fist on the bed.
“So I became the consequence the system wouldn’t provide.”
She let that sit.
“I went after him eventually. The man who destroyed us. He wasn’t my first target. He was my third. Just another name on a list. He never knew it was me.” She paused. “And I’m okay withthat. He lost a shit-ton of money and the respect of everyone in his circle. I made sure he didn’t have a friend left to his name.”
“How many have you taken down total?” Isaac’s voice was low.
“Twelve. In three years. But there are so many more. Always more. Whatever I steal, I fence and give back to the victims. I only keep what I need to survive.”
He exhaled. A long, controlled breath through his nose.
The silence that followed was heavy and still. She felt scraped clean. Three years of carrying this alone, and now it was in the room between them. Messy, raw, and she had no idea what he’d do with it.
She began to shake. Not crying, she was well past tears. But the shaking she couldn’t stop.
Isaac’s hand closed over hers. She looked down at it. His palm was warm and steady, his fingers careful around her damaged wrist. He didn’t squeeze. Just held.
She leaned forward, her forehead finding his shoulder, and she stayed there.
He brought his other hand up to the back of her head. His fingers slid into her hair and rested there. He breathed slowly, deliberately, keeping himself anchored so she could come apart.
They stayed like that until the shaking in her chest subsided and her breathing evened out.
Then he pulled back. Held her face in both hands. Looked at her with something she couldn’t deflect and didn’t try to.
“What you’re doing,” he said. “The way you’re doing it. It’s going to end one of two ways.”
“Isaac—”
“You’re going to get caught and go to prison, or you’re going to end up dead. There is no third option. Sooner or later, someone is going to connect the pattern. Or you’re going to beon a wall when your body quits.” His thumbs moved against her cheekbones. “The way it quit last night because of the hEDS.”
She pulled back from his hands. Of course, Cassandra had explained it all to him. That’s how he’d known how to take care of her. “My body has always?—”
“Your body almost killed you twelve hours ago. You couldn’t grip a ledge. Your knee gave out twenty feet off the ground. If I hadn’t been in that building?—”
She rubbed her eyes. “I know. Every job takes a toll. I know that.”
“Then you know what I’m about to say.”
“That I can’t keep doing this.”
“That you can’t keep doing this.”
She stood up. Her knee screamed but held. She took three steps toward the window and stopped, her back to him, her arms wrapped around herself.
“You’re asking me to stop,” she said. “Just stop.”
“Yes.”
“And do what? Pretend I don’t know what I know? Pretend those people aren’t out there right now, doing to other families exactly what was done to mine?” She turned. “There are twelve targets behind me and dozens more ahead. Families who will never see justice unless someone steps in. You want me to walk away from that.”
“I want you to be alive.”
“I am alive. This is what being alive looks like for me.”
“Last night is what being alive looks like?” His voice rose for the first time. “Hanging off a wall with no grip and no way down? That’s your version of living?”
