Page 25 of The Final Cut

“She looked at me like she had every right to decide whether I lived. And you already knew why.”

The marsh presses, dawn dark and silent against the glass. I can see our reflections there: Nash seated like a judge waiting for sentencing, Shiloh pale with his mouth shut for once, Ever standing half-turned toward the screens because even furious, he cannot stop watching the doors.

“The bitch who looked at two seven-year-old girls and decided one of them was disposable,” I say, the words coming faster now, hotter, “that was my fucking Nana? She took Delia. She took my parents. She took fifteen years from me and then sent a man to put a bullet in Cal because I had the nerve to keep breathing?”

Memories slide through me like smoke under a door.

A gold bracelet flashing near a cake.

Red nails brushing dark hair from my cheek.

Spanish murmured above me. Mija. Ven aquí.

My mother’s voice, strained so tight it barely sounded like hers. Don’t call her that.

The images burn as they come. They should feel soft. They should belong to someone safe. Instead, each one scrapes at the inside of my skull, and my body cannot tell memory from threat.

I reach for the rubber bands.

Snap.

The sting is too small.

Snap.

Still too small.

Nash lifts a hand and starts to rise.

I point at him. “Do not even think about trying to manage me right now.”

He stops.

“I am done being managed.”

My voice fills the room, then shreds at the edges. The marsh stays quiet outside the glass. The house stays beautiful around me. Secure. Remote. Designed by men who believe danger can be held off with codes and cameras and reinforced walls.

Maybe it can.

Maybe bodies can be protected that way.

The rest of me is already loose in the room, wild and furious and looking for somewhere to go.

“I needed the truth,” I say. “I needed it before she smiled at me in that ballroom. I needed it before Delia had to drag me away from a chapel trap. I needed it before Cal stepped in front of a bullet meant for me.”

Shiloh stands slowly.

I shake my head. He stops.

Let them all stop. Let the whole damn world stop putting its hands on me.

“I don’t want comfort,” I say.

My fingers curl in Homer’s harness. He makes one offended chirp and I loosen my grip, breathing hard through my nose.

I set him on the floor before my anger starts borrowing his small body for ballast. He trots away with his leash dragging, tail high, heading straight for the forbidden-looking kitchen island.

“I don’t want to sit down. I don’t want to sleep. I don’t want one of you to tell me I’m safe, because every safe place I have ever had came with a locked door and a missing piece of the story.”