“One thing you know is true,” he finishes.
I swallow. “I’m… here,” I say. “I’m at the table. I’m okay.”
He studies my face for a long second, then nods slowly. “Yeah,” he says. “You are.”
The room seeps back into focus. Jackie’s wide eyes, Zay’s drawn brows, George’s quiet concern, even Johnson’s wary shift in his chair. The photo is still there, but it’s just ink and paper again, not a portal.
I straighten slowly, shoulders shaking.
“Sorry,” I say. “The picture just?—”
“What did it hit?” Asher asks gently. “What did it remind you of?”
The flash of the memory presses behind my eyes again, sharp enough to hurt. The man on the ground. The way blood creeps along the cracks in concrete like it’s trying to escape.
My tongue feels thick.
“It’s okay,” he says. “You don’t have to?—”
“It was the photo,” I cut in, grasping at the easiest lie within reach. “Just… seeing him like that. Dead. It caught me off guard.”
Asher’s eyes search my face, like he’s flipping through pages of a book he knows has whole chapters torn out. He doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t push.
“Yeah,” he says finally. “I get that.”
George clears his throat. “We can table this for now,” he offers. “Come back to Marcus when we’re less… raw.”
“No,” I say quickly, though my hands are still trembling. “We keep going. We need answers. We’re not letting this sit forever.”
Zay looks at me with a softness that makes my chest ache. “You sure, V?”
I nod, even if sure is a generous word. “We just… don’t start by assuming the worst of the wrong people. We follow facts. We don’t treat speculation like a verdict.”
Johnson opens his mouth like he wants to argue, then closes it again when Asher turns his head slowly in his direction, an expression carved from stone.
“Fine,” Johnson mutters. “We follow facts.”
My pulse finally settles into something close to normal. The panic slinks back into the shadows, not gone, but quieter.
I adjust my grip on the table’s edge and force myself to meet their eyes one by one.
“I’m fine,” I say.
Asher’s hand stays on my knee for a moment longer than necessary before he pulls it back.
“We’ll make sure you are,” he murmurs.
11
ISAIAH
Valentina has been unravelingfor two days straight, and I’m the only one who seems to notice the way the threads are actually snapping. Everyone else sees the surface: the quietness, the stillness, the way she stays in Xavier’s room every hour she can. They think she’s grieving, coping, overwhelmed. But I know her better than that. Her quiet isn’t calm—it’s a vacuum. A hollow space where she’s disappearing piece by piece, slipping behind her own eyes as if her mind has retreated somewhere I can’t follow unless I pry the walls apart with my bare hands.
I can’t let her stay inside that house another second. The rooms feel too small, too suffocating, too saturated with memory—Xavier’s blood on Asher’s shirt, Valentina’s panic attack, every stare from the council men who think she’s fragile or foolish or manipulable. She can’t breathe there.
So I get her out.
“Just come with me,” I tell her quietly. “Fifteen minutes.”
