Which means they're not mine to touch. Not under the rules I operate by. Not without going to Cain first. And going to Cain means telling him I've been looking into the hit and run, which means admitting I went sideways from everything he sanctioned.
He'll lose his mind.
"Nothing," I say. "We do nothing with it yet."
"Yet," Miles repeats.
"Yet."
He's quiet for a moment. "You want me to keep digging? Quietly?"
"Keep digging," I say. "But Miles, nobody hears about this. Not Mason, not Declan, not Lileah. Nobody."
Miles exhales. A long, slow sound that tells me exactly how he feels about this without him having to say it.
"You know what you're doing?" he asks.
"Not even a little bit."
"Okay." A pause. "Okay. Yeah. I've got you."
"I know you do."
I end the call and stand in the dark kitchen for a long time.
The rule exists for a reason. Cain built it into the foundation of everything we do because without it, we're not a family operating with purpose, we're just people with weapons and grudges, and that ends one way. He's said it so many times it's carved into all of us.
Never go after anyone not on the list. The list exists so we don't become the thing we're fighting against.
I've never broken that rule.
I've never wanted to before.
I pick up my phone. Look at the name one more time.
Then I lock the screen and put it in my pocket, I stand there in the quiet of the house, in the dark, listening to the sound of everyone I love sleeping safely overhead.
Olivia is here tonight and not in the dorm. She’s down the hall. She doesn't know about the name yet. I don't know when I'm going to tell her. Or how. Or what happens after, when she looks at me with those eyes and asks me what we're going to do about it.
Because the answer right now is nothing.
And I don't know how long I can hold that line.
Three days pass.
I go to lectures. I pick Olivia up from Skyline. I sit at the dinner table and answer when people talk to me and pretend that the name on my phone isn't the first thing I think about every morning and the last thing sitting behind my eyes every night.
Today I finally have time to go see Cain. He's at his desk when I walk in. He doesn't even look up straight away, I’m not even surprised. I shake my head when he snaps.
"Shut the door."
He closes the folder in front of him, sets it to one side, and folds his hands on the desk. Then he looks at me With that steady, evaluating look that has never once made me feel like a kid and has also never once let me get away with anything.
"Sit down."
He reaches into the drawer and pulls out a file. Thicker than I expected. He slides it across the desk without a word.
I open it.
