Page 89 of Wicked Brutal

“But?”

“But I want to do something.”

Ryan nods toward the phone. “You are.”

I look down. Carlisle. Aster. Geneva. Montreal. Customs. Things I heard years ago and never understood. Maybe they mean nothing. Maybe one of them means everything.

“Your job isn’t to investigate Roman. You don’t go through his study. You don’t start asking questions you wouldn’t normally ask. You don’t bait Tremblay. You don’t take risks.”

I look at him. “Are you done?”

“No.”

“Ryan.”

He almost smiles. “You hear something because you’re already there, you remember it. That’s it. If Jane tells you something on her own, fine. You don’t push her either.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“I know.” He glances toward the end of the aisle before hooking one finger around mine. Hidden between us. Small. Safe. “You’re not bait.”

“I know.”

“And I’m not turning you into some fucking spy.”

“That’s disappointing. Penny thinks we’re spies.”

“Penny thinks putting on sunglasses makes her undercover.”

“She does look good in them.”

“Not the point.”

I laugh, and Ryan squeezes my finger. “Carlisle.”

“What about him?”

“Think.”

I lean my shoulder against the shelf. “Bossy.”

“Very.”

“Annoying.”

“Also very.”

“Obsessed with me.”

“Completely.” That one comes without a joke, and my chest warms. I look back down at the phone.

Then I think. Really think. And something changes.

All those conversations Dad had because I was only his daughter. All the names. The trips. The phone calls. The arguments with Mom. The dinners where men drank expensive alcohol and talked around us because they believed the women at the table weren’t part of the conversation. Victor tonight, telling me he’d been waiting since I was thirteen — saying it in front of me, to me, because it never once occurred to him that the girl he’d been laying down like a bottle had been awake the whole time, listening.

Dad has spent my entire life assuming I could hear him without ever understanding him. Victor made the same mistake tonight. Maybe they’ll keep making it.

I don’t have to know what every name means. I don’t have to solve anything. I just have to remember.