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He remains focused on his phone. “Research and time.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“No, it’s not. But do you think I owe you one?”

“Call it professional curiosity,” I say, pushing my plate away and leaning back in my seat. Time for the ego stroke. “I pull people’s lives apart for a living, Ryker. There’s nothing I can’t find out, no secret I can’t unearth. I don’t need a paper trail to discover someone’s weakness. That’s why Nemesis wanted me. That’s why everyone wants me. I’m fucking good at what I do.” He lifts his gaze to me. “How are you better?”

Ryker places his phone on the table and considers me, his index finger tapping a slow rhythm against the wood. “When you look into people, you do it all from your laptop, right?” I nod. “What if you went further? What if, for an entire year after finding you, I spent every waking second learning your movements, schedules, how a person types, talks, thinks, acts, walks.” He searches my face. “I walked through your homes when you weren’t home. Lay on your beds. Breathed in your scent. I read your emails, your letters, listened to your phone calls, wore your clothes. I spent almost every penny I had bugging your lives and feasting on every morsel of information I could. I’m better because I took my time. I didn’t just research you. I became you.”

I’m breathing fast, watching a wildness grow in his eyes. “Why watch us for so long? Why not just kill us?”

His lip curls into a smirk. “Because death wasn’t enough. I wanted to make you hurt. I wanted to take away something you all loved. Speaking of, are you ready to see our girl?”

I’m reeling from the information, my heart hammering as we go back upstairs and to another bedroom. He unlocks the door, and I look between him and the room.

“One night. Then you go back downstairs,” he says, and I eye him cautiously before stepping inside. He closes the door behind me and locks it.

But it’s empty.

Until the en suite door opens, and Silence appears.

My knees almost buckle at the sight of her, and she cries out, running to me and throwing her arms around my neck. I hold her, letting her cry against my shoulder as I breathe in everything about her. She’s trembling, arms tight around me, and Bullet wiggles over, nudging my knee. “You’re okay,” she whispers. “Are you okay? Zayden?”

“He got his antibiotics,” I say, and pull back to look down at her “He’ll get better.”

“Thank God,” she whispers. “I’ve only just woken up. That fucker drugged me. Are you sure you’re okay?”

I nod, holding her face. “He said I have one night.”

“But why? I don’t understand.”

“He’s trying to get me on his side. Trying to get me to turn against my brothers.”

She tuts. “As if that’d work. God, I missed you. I missed you so much.”

Eventually, we climb into bed, and I hold onto her. It’s strange to be somewhere warm and comfortable after so long, and I drink up every second while I have it.

“I hate that they’re in pain down there,” I say.

She nuzzles into my neck. “I know, but they won’t hold it against you. You all love each other too much. What happened that night?”

I fill her in with the night we went to get Zayden and how it all went so fucking wrong. She tells me about Charlie and Mercy’s arrest, and how she was taken from the apartment not long after we left. She says she’s been out of it for weeks with a concussion, and I groan, kissing her temple.

“You were here the whole time.”

“I know.”

I glance down at her pajamas. “What are you wearing, by the way?”

She stretches out the T-shirt that has a cartoon playing card on it with large breasts. Underneath it says “Hold’Em? I hardly know ’em!”

“It’s Mercy’s,” she says. “The brute who took me must have thought her suitcase was mine.”

“It’s … charming.”

“It’s awful.”

“Then take it off.” I pause. “Not like that. I just mean⁠—”