Page 120 of Wicked Brutal

I swallow. Then another message appears.

Ally: dad says victor is calling at 8

I look at the clock. 6:52.

Arthur watches my face. “What’s happening?”

“Victor calls at eight with the time.” Nobody says anything. Sixty-eight minutes.

I put my phone facedown on my thigh and look at Arthur. “When we move, Tobias goes with her.”

Arthur holds my eyes. “Yes.”

“No. I need everybody in this room to hear me.” Nobody interrupts. “Ally doesn’t leave that house and spend the next six months wondering whether Roman is punishing Tobias because she got out. We don’t get her safe and call that a fucking win while her six-year-old brother stays behind.”

Dad’s expression is steady beside me.

Arthur nods. “We agree.”

“And we don’t take Tobias until Roman can’t get him back.”

“Agreed.”

I look around the room. At the boys. At our fathers. At men who six months ago would’ve had no fucking reason to be sitting together at six in the morning trying to save Roman O’Toole’s daughter and son. Now nobody looks away.

Arthur pulls the folder back toward him. “We build it carefully.”

“Build it airtight.”

“We will.”

I pick up my phone again. 6:54. Sixty-six minutes. “Good.”

Because Roman and Victor have spent years thinking Ally was the stupid girl sitting quietly at their table. They’ve been wrong about her for eighteen years.

Now we’re going to make that mistake cost them everything.

The dress is on my bed when I come out of the shower.

I stop in the bathroom doorway, towel wrapped around me, and stare at it. It wasn’t there when I went in. The clothes I’d laid out for myself are gone, and in their place is a navy dress with tiny white dots, long sleeves, a fitted waist, and a wide white collar. Black heels sit neatly on the floor beside the bed, and a matching navy headband rests on top of the dress.

I don’t need to ask who put them there. My father has opinions about what I’m wearing to lunch with my future husband, and apparently the outfit I’d chosen didn’t meet them.

I check the time on my phone. 9:47. Victor will be here at eleven.

I dress, leave my hair down beneath the headband, and take longer than I normally would with my makeup — not because I care what Victor thinks, but because Dad will notice if I don’t look like I made an effort.

By the time I walk downstairs, it’s a few minutes after ten. Dad is at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee and his phone beside him. Mom is putting away the last of the breakfast dishes, and Tobias is sprawled across the living room rug with crayons and construction paper spread around him.

My heels announce me before I reach the kitchen. Dad looks up. I stop. His gaze moves over me slowly, taking in everything he chose before returning to my face. “Good.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“You found everything.”

“I did.”

“I didn’t think what you had laid out was appropriate for today.”