Page 26 of The Final Cut

Nash’s face tightens, but he gives me silence.

Ever watches me like every word is cutting through him on its way out.

Shiloh’s eyes shine in the low light. He blinks it back and swallows whatever beautiful thing he might have said.

I turn toward the windows.

My reflection stares back at me from the glass. Pale face. Wild hair. Gray sweatshirt. Rubber bands on one wrist. A bruise starting near my collarbone. Behind my reflection, the men sit in a line on the couch while I conduct the world’s angriest family meeting in a luxury bunker disguised as a fishing shack.

Because they are still my family. Damnit.

Somewhere across the water, Isabel is alive. Delia is with her. And Cal is breathing through a machine.

My grandmother ordered me dead when I was seven years old, failed, then waited fifteen years and tried again.

The rage in me stops being sharp and turns heavy. Dangerous.

I turn back around and look at Nash, then Ever, then Shiloh.

“I need a drink, and I need to break something,” I mutter.

CHAPTER FIVE

SHILOH

God have mercy, she’s breaking my fucking heart.

Reva stands in the middle of Nash’s beautiful marsh fortress with a dead woman’s anger on her face and a child’s grief trapped behind her eyes. Her hands keep going to her wrist. Snap. Pause. Snap again. Each little sting lands in my own skin because I know what she’s doing. I know what she’s trying to hold back.

Cal in a hospital bed.

Delia dragged away.

Isabel’s name turning from villain to blood.

Nash sits on the sectional like a man ready to take a knife because he earned it. Ever has gone still beside me, every piece of him aimed at her, waiting for the threat to show him where to strike. There is no threat in this room he can put down. That’s the problem. Reva’s pain has nowhere to go.

She paces toward the windows, stops, turns. Her reflection moves with her in the glass, pale and wild-eyed under the soft recessed lights. The marsh beyond her stays quiet, brightening steadily but still dim in the early morning light.

“I need a drink, and I need to break something,” she says.

I’m on my feet before the last word finishes. “I can make that happen.”

Three faces turn toward me.

Reva’s eyes narrow. “Okay, then.”

“Shiloh,” Nash says, warning tucked neatly beneath my name.

I ignore him and look at Ever.

Watch her.

I don’t say it. I don’t need to. Ever reads the plea anyway. His chin dips once.

I head for the kitchen, then past it, opening the first pantry cabinet door and finding dry goods, paper towels, a first-aid kit, two flashlights, and the kind of emergency rations that make a man question whether survival is worth the texture. Second door gives me cleaning supplies, batteries, and three neatly labeled plastic bins.

The third door gives me a wooden crate full of ugly floral plates.