Page 168 of The Final Cut

“I’m aware.”

“No.” She leans forward, and Homer protests at the shift. “I don’t think you are. I don’t want Isabel’s chair. I don’t want her rooms, her ledgers, her men, her prayers, her ridiculous rules about blood and roses and who gets to breathe with permission. I don’t want any of it.”

“I know.”

“Stop saying that like it helps.”

“It doesn’t help,” I say. “And it’s still true.”

Her eyes flash with anger. I keep my voice even because anything else will turn this into a fight she can refuse on principle. “You would not lead as Isabel did.”

Delia’s mouth twists. “Pretty promise.”

“No. Infrastructure. Nash has money, routes, lawyers, men, and legitimate businesses that can absorb or starve off pieces of La Rosa. Ever can dismantle surveillance and communication structures faster than Isabel can replace them. Shiloh knows every soft point in this city because people tell him things when he smiles.”

Shiloh lifts two fingers. “My contribution is being slutty and approachable. Noted.”

Nash gives him a look. Shiloh drops his hand. “Jesus, sorry. Lighten up.”

I continue, eyes on Delia. “I know where bodies are buried and which men put them there. Marisol knows the old bloodline truths Isabel hid or bent. Reva has the failed-death myth Isabel created by failing to kill her.”

Reva goes rigid. “I am not a myth.”

“No,” I say. “You’re worse. You’re proof.”

She swallows. Delia looks between us, something sharp and unwilling moving behind her eyes.

“If you sit in that chair,” I tell her, “it does not have to remain a throne. It can become a lock. A temporary one if that’s what you want. A way to keep the worst men from reaching for it first while we tear out what cannot be saved.”

“You make it sound so simple.”

“It will be bloody.”

“Finally. Truth.”

“It will also keep you alive.”

Her gaze hardens. I do not let her look away from the rest of it.

“And Reva. And Marisol.”

Reva’s voice is faint when she speaks. “Can’t we just leave?”

Every head turns toward her, and she just barely keeps herself from squirming. I feel the instant regret in the way she sits taller, as if she can pull the desperation back by making her spine straighter.

“I mean it,” she says, quieter now. “Move somewhere. Start over. Cal, if he wakes up. Delia. Marisol, if she’ll come. All of you. We have money, don’t we? Fake names. Routes. Whatever. Why does it have to be this?”

My arms close around her before I decide to do it.

She doesn’t melt. She holds herself carefully in my lap, small and fierce and painfully young for one second. Twenty-two. A girl who should be worried about rent and bad dates and whether her cat will destroy hotel furniture, not cartel succession and the living mother she buried as a child.

Across from us, Delia laughs without humor. “No.”

Reva looks at her. “You didn’t even think about it.”

“I have thought about running since I was seven years old.”

Reva’s chin tips up in acknowledgment.