Page 23 of The Final Cut

Nash goes very still. Shiloh lowers the bag in his hand. Ever’s gaze flicks to the screens, then back to me. He does not like standing still while a perimeter exists unchecked. Good. I don’t like standing still inside another person’s decisions.

“Sit,” I say.

Shiloh looks at the couch, then at Nash. “Are we obeying?”

“We are listening,” Nash says.

“Great. Sounds obeying-adjacent.”

I point toward the sectional, the lines of my arm and hand and finger long and imperious. “All of you. Couch. Now.”

Ever’s brows draw together. “Reva⁠—”

“I swear to God, Ever, if you tell me this can wait, I will throw that very expensive-looking bowl through those very expensive-looking windows, and we can all learn together how shatterproof they are.”

Shiloh’s mouth twitches, then smooths because he remembers the shape of the night.

Nash walks to the sectional and sits.

That, more than anything else, makes Ever obey. Shiloh follows, dropping onto the cushion with a tired grace that belongs on stage instead of in a safehouse after midnight. Ever stays on the edge, body angled toward the screens. I let him have that much because I need him listening, and if his eyes can still touch the cameras, maybe his brain will stay in the room.

Homer trots back to me, unimpressed by my authority. I pick him up and tuck him against my side. He allows it with the grim mercy of a tiny king.

I pace in front of the couch.

Once.

Twice.

The rubber band snaps against my wrist before I decide to do it. Pain sparks bright and quick. My lungs open a fraction.

“I know why I’m here,” I say. “I’m angry. I’m scared. I understand the hospital is compromised. I understand Isabel will use Cal, and me, and Delia, and probably every person I have ever loved if it gets her what she wants.”

Nash watches me without interrupting. Wise of him.

“I am tired of understanding everyone else’s reasons after the damage is already done, though.”

Shiloh’s face shifts. Hurt, yes. Guilt too. Anger, maybe, but that anger is turned outward, toward the woman who put all of us here.

Good. He can keep that.

“I’ve been sitting here trying to wrap my head around all of this. Work through everything that happened,” I say. “Cal was shot. Delia was dragged back inside. Maybe crazy of all crazies, I found out the woman trying to kill me is my grandmother.”

The word changes the room.

Grandmother.

Nana.

It should belong to sugar and birthday candles and soft hands smoothing hair away from my face. It should belong to someone who kept school pictures on a fridge and kissed scraped knees and smelled like flour, roses, something warm.

Instead, it belongs to Isabel del Rosario.

Mother Superior.

The woman in silk who looked at me like I was unfinished business.

Shiloh’s face tightens. His shock is no longer new. He heard it when I did, through Ever’s feed or in the chaos afterward, but hearing a thing once does not make it settle. Now it sits in the room with us, breathing.