“Miss Brennan,” Alessandro says. “You shouldn’t remain here.”
“Because I’m grieving?”
“Because men are watching.”
“I noticed.”
“Yes,” he says. “You did.” He gestures toward the waiting car. Not insistently. Not gently. Simply indicating the next available structure. “My home is secure. You’ll be protected there until arrangements are made.”
Rory makes a sound like an oath being strangled. “No. Absolutely not.”
I agree with him. Which is unfortunate, because agreement has never stopped a bad idea from being useful.
Alessandro’s offer isn’t protection. Not only that, at least. Protection is the velvet word men use when they want containment to look civilized. At his estate, every door will have a purpose. Every servant will report something to someone. Every hallway will teach me what they’re afraid I might find.
At Rory’s, I would be safe. At Alessandro’s, I might become dangerous.
Rory steps close enough now that I can feel the heat of him through the rain. “Evie. Come home.”
Home.
The word lands wrong. Home is a place where my father is alive downstairs, pretending not to care if I eat dinner. Home is peat smoke and wet fields and men outside doors who cannot read but are loyal.
Home is already dead. What remains is geography.
“I will,” I say.
Relief breaks across my uncle’s face. Poor man.
“After,” I finish.
“After what?” Rory asks, frowning.
I look at Alessandro. “After I understand what happened.”
Rory’s expression hardens. “You think he’ll give you that?”
“I don’t think I have any choice.”
Alessandro inclines his head once, as if I’ve confirmed something he was already beginning to suspect. “Then come.”
I turn back to the ambulance. The rain has softened the blood at the edge of the street. It runs thin now, pink in the water, almost delicate.
My father would despise that. He preferred mess to be contained.
I step closer to him one last time, touching the edge of the sheet, not his face. I cannot touch his face here. Not with all these men watching, weighing, recording grief as if it might become useful later.
“I’ll find it,” I say to him under my breath.
Not justice. Justice is a word for courts and fairy tales and people who believe systems exist for the wounded.
Truth, perhaps.
Leverage, definitely.
I let go.
Then I walk away from my father’s body toward the car of the man who knows why he’s dead. That feels like betrayal, but then I remind myself it’s not. Betrayal is emotional.
