Page 192 of The Final Cut

Delia stands beside me, so close our sleeves nearly touch. I feel her breath move, slow and steady, as if all those years under Isabel taught her how to become still while monsters bare teeth.

I am less still.

My hands are cold. My heart is furious. My father’s name sits inside me with Cal’s blood and my mother’s tears and every version of my sister that Isabel tried to carve into usefulness.

I think of the phone.

Nana saying hang up, Reva.

I think of a four-year-old girl who may have answered because she missed a voice that sounded like family.

I think of a woman who used that.

Fear turns into something with edges as Delia’s smile deepens by a fraction.

“You’re not going anywhere.”

Isabel’s eyes cut to her. Delia takes one step closer.

“It’s time for La Rosa to change hands.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

SHILOH

For one breath, no one moves.

Delia stands in the aisle beside Reva, spine straight, chin lifted, voice still hanging in the incense-thick air.

It’s time for La Rosa to change hands.

The church seems to understand the words before the rest of us do. Candles flicker near the icons. Smoke drifts beneath painted saints with gold around their heads and grief carved into their eyes. Somewhere near the vestibule, one of the Volkov men shifts his weight, and the soft scrape of his shoe against stone sounds obscene in the silence.

I’ve seen a lot of rooms turn.

Poker rooms. Back rooms. Bedrooms. Alleyways. The main floor of Noir when a man realizes too late that he mistook entertainment for permission.

This is different. This is a church full of predators watching an old queen discover she’s run out of loyal hands.

Isabel doesn’t look at the men who have failed to move for her.

She looks at her granddaughters.

Reva is closest to me, though still too far. I can see the hard line of her shoulders from where I stand one pew back and to the side, near Ever. Deacon is a shadow behind the girls, gun hidden under his jacket, body angled toward every person who might become a problem. Nash stands near the end of the pew with one hand loose at his side, face so calm I know every violent thing in him has gone quiet enough to hear.

Marisol steps into the aisle. Her black veil is pushed back from her face now.

That choice is deliberate. Dangerous. A daughter letting every person in this church see exactly who is standing against her mother.

Isabel’s mouth tightens.

“Move, Marisol.”

Marisol ignores the command.

I didn’t expect steel from her the first time I saw her in the hospital chapel, grief-stripped and shaking from Reva’s pain.

I should have, though. Women don’t survive Isabel by staying soft all the way through. They don’t survive anything by being soft. Women are some of the strongest fucking creatures I’ve ever had the pleasure of being around.