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Zayden nods slowly. “I wanted to make sure she had good intentions before I told you. It was clear she didn’t. She would’ve taken anything she could and left us again.”

“You’re a fucking liar,” Xavier whispers.

“I protected you,” Zayden hits back. “Like I always have. Like I always will.”

I shake my head. “We had a right to know.”

“Oh, now you want responsibility?” he spits out. “You’re fine to hand it over when it’s too hard, aren’t you? You’re happy to look to me when it’s convenient. I make the tough decisions because you can’t!”

“Fuck you!” Xavier shouts. “You had no fucking right, and you know it!”

Ryker laughs heartily. “This is so much easier than I thought it’d be. Let’s do Silence again. Silence, honey, tell them about your first kill.”

My mind is spinning. Heart aching. Throat sore. “Stop this.”

“Nope,” Ryker says, popping the ‘p’. “Come on, Silence. Won’t we all feel so much better getting this off our chests?” Silence stares at her lap, refusing to look up. I want to reach for her. Hold her. I want to rewind this entire nightmare. “Fine, I’ll do it. Silence watched her dear old daddy die. Ooh. Say that five times fast.” Her head is bowed, but I see the tear drip onto her lap. “She came home from prom, and her dad was on the floor. Throat and wrists cut. But he was still alive, wasn’t he?”

“Please, stop,” she pleads.

“You sat on the kitchen floor, you watched him die, then you called 911. Had to make sure he was out of your life for good, didn’t you?”

“The man beat her with a bag of fucking rocks!” I shout. “You can’t blame her for wanting to escape!”

Ryker shrugs. “But she’s such a humanitarian now, isn’t she?”

Silence lifts her head, her cheeks shining with tears, eyes red. “I hate you.”

Ryker smiles, reaching out to wipe away a tear from her cheek. “You should be hating the man who slit your father’s throat. Isn’t that right, Zayden?”

My attention snaps to my brother. Silence’s gaze drifts to her husband, and the blood drains from her face.

The quiet feels charged, the secrets spilling free causing a spark which could engulf us all.

“Your daddy was Zayden’s first kill. His graduation from the Agency,” Ryker says. “And he knew who you were, Silence.”

“Years later!” Zayden bellows, fixing his attention on her. His eyes are wide, his words rushed and desperate. “I swear, Silence, I only found out when we were already married.”

She wrenches her hand out of his, searching his face, her expression filled with horror.

“Wow, Zayden.” Ryker whistles. “You’ve really fucked things up.”

My thoughts are dragging me under as chaos unfolds around me. Zayden is hurrying out explanations and promises to explain, Xavier is simmering in his own rage, and all the while, Ryker smirks.

He’s won.

I thought we were unbreakable. Even with the fractures every family has, I thought we could get through this. Emerge on the other side a little wounded but already healing.

How has this happened?

Through the roaring commotion and Ryker’s laughter, Bullet comes to my side. He’s on my right, out of Ryker’s view, and he rests his chin on my lap, something in his mouth. His collar.

He wags his tail, and I notice the buckle, the metal worn and slightly bent. My gaze cuts to Xavier—his cuffs gone.

“—blaming me for your own fuck-ups!” Zayden shouts.

“My fuck-ups? Mine?” Xavier bellows back. “You’ve been desperate to keep us in your shadow for years, and do you wanna know something?”

Zayden sneers at him. “Fucking say it. We may as well let it all out.”