Page 16

My vision blurred at the edges. My heart hammered against my ribs—not like grief, but like panic given a body. The memory of Nolan’s voice returned with cold, precise clarity.

If you try to take that boy and run, I will find your Italian husband and I will end him. Then I will raise Henry myself.

The choice he had forced on me hardened all over again: stay and watch my husband from a distance, or leave and make certain he died.

There had been no third option. There had never been a third option. Mom’s knees gave way.

Duncan caught her before she hit the floor, horror replacing everything else on his face as he eased her into a chair. She stared at me as though the world she had trusted had collapsed beneath her.

“He hit you?” Her voice barely existed, yet it carried more pain than all of Uncle Sal’s shouting. “You were here with me, and he hit you?”

The question was no longer asking for information. It was asking how a mother could have missed it. How she had shared a house with a monster and never known.

“He made certain you wouldn’t see.” Saying it aloud stripped away another layer of concealment. Another year of silence. Another excuse.

Another reason I had learned to hide the bruises, to move carefully, to smile through the pain. “Then he told me Henry would be brought into the Irish family after Salvatore was dead.”

I swallowed hard, my throat raw from speaking truths I had buried so deep I had almost forgotten they existed.

“As though my baby was something he could inherit.” The words hung in the air between us—a final indictment of the man who had controlled me through fear, who had weaponized my love for my son against me, who had forced me to choose between the two people I loved most in the world and guaranteed that I would lose one of them no matter what I decided.

Uncle Sal turned toward the hallway. The movement was immediate. Instinctive. As if Nolan still existed somewhere within reach. As if violence could travel backward through time and undo what had already been done. His entire body tightened around the need to hunt. To punish. To fix something that could no longer be fixed. Mac caught his arm before he reached the door, and they exchanged a look. No words. None were necessary. The promise of violence hung between them anyway.

Tyran moved into Uncle Sal’s path a moment later. He said nothing, but the hand he pressed against his best friend’s shoulder carried the authority of the only man in the room who could help hold him there.

“No,” Mom’s voice cut across the room.

Everyone stopped as she rose from the chair Duncan had lowered her into and stepped directly into her brother’s path. Tears streaked her face. Her hands trembled. But there was nothing fragile about her.

“You will not turn what happened to my daughter into another excuse for men to spill blood before she has finished speaking.”

Uncle Sal stared at her. Grief and fury fought openly across his face.

“He threatened my niece and her child.” His voice cracked beneath the anger. “What the fuck do you expect me to do, Caity?”

For the first time, the rage sounded less like violence and more like helplessness. Like a man who had just discovered there had been monsters inside his family while he was busy protecting it from enemies outside.

Mom stepped closer and pressed both hands against his chest. Not to stop him. To anchor him. “Listen to her.” Her voice broke. “For once in your life, Sal, do something harder than killing a man.” Tears spilled down her face. “Listen.”

Something in him yielded. Not completely. Not peacefully. But enough. His shoulders lowered a fraction. His jaw unclenched. The shine in his eyes revealed what pride would never allow him to say aloud. He was hurting too.

The room settled around that hurt. Nobody spoke for several seconds.

Then Duncan turned toward me. He remained close enough to catch Mom if she fell again. Close enough to understand that the next answer might hurt even more than the last.

“What happened to Salvatore?”

This time he used my husband’s name without hesitation. Without judgment. Without resentment. Only respect.

“Do you know who killed him?”

The question shattered whatever composure I still had left. Because this was the wound beneath every other wound. The one I had carried alone. “No.”

The word came out hollow. Empty. “All I know is that someone in the Russian Bratva killed him.” I swallowed. “And that he died protecting Illyria.” My fingers tightened around the ring. “I never learned how he ended up in their path.”

Each admission felt like another failure. Another thing I should have known but didn’t. “I don’t know whether anyone ordered it.” My voice shook. “I don’t know whether Nolan had anything to do with it.”

Silence followed. Not disbelief. Not judgment. Just the terrible realization that grief had stolen answers as well as people.