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I wanted to remain until morning. I wanted to see his eyes open, hear his voice, and let daylight trick me into believing I belonged in the room. But goodbye offered no mercy to those who delayed it. If I stayed, I would begin imagining another visit, another year, another chance to tell him myself.

Hope could become another way to endanger him.

I eased my hand from his and tucked the blanket around his bare foot. Then I kissed his forehead, once for Salvatore and once for me.

At the doorway, I looked back.

Illyria had taken my place beside the bed. She rested one hand against Henry’s back and the other over the space where my fingers had been. She met my eyes across the room, and I saw the promise there—not that she would die protecting him, but that she would survive whatever his protection required.

I left before Henry could wake and ask which mother had been crying beside him.

Rurik waited at the bottom of the stairs. He looked at my empty hands and understood I had left something upstairs that no man could retrieve. He didn’t ask whether I was ready. He simply opened the front door and followed me into the dark.

The first time I left my son, I’d survived by believing I might see him again.

This time, I knew better.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

The front door closed behind us, sealing Henry inside the only home I had ever been able to give him.

Rurik walked beside me through the dark without touching me. The rain had thinned to a cold mist, fine enough to gather on my face without hiding the tears Illyria had not wiped away. Two armed men waited near the vehicles, but Rurik dismissed them with a glance and opened the passenger door of the first SUV himself.

I got in because standing beneath Henry’s window required more strength than I had left.

Rurik settled behind the wheel, closed his door, and rested both hands on the steering wheel while he stared through the windshield at Maxim’s sleeping house. The engine stayed silent.

A light appeared upstairs. I imagined Illyria returning to Henry’s bedside, checking his blankets, touching his back to reassure herself that he was breathing. I wanted the house to vanish before weakness sent me running toward a room where I no longer belonged.

Rurik watched the same window. Men like him recognized departures; too many happened with guns drawn and blood on the floor. Mine had been quieter, but it carried the same finality.

“Boston,” I said.

“No.”

I turned toward him. “No?”

“You said goodbye to your son.”

The accusation struck with enough precision to make denial useless. I looked through my window instead, toward the second floor where one room remained dark.

“I saw Henry. That was why we came.”

“You didn’t come to see him.” Rurik’s voice remained controlled, which made the anger beneath it more dangerous. “You came to leave him.”

“Those are the same thing for me.”

“They were not the same tonight.”

My hand tightened around the strap of my bag. Salvatore’s files rested inside it beside the authorization that had condemned him. Paper seemed too fragile to carry so many deaths, yet everyone I loved had begun to feel like another page I needed to place somewhere safe.

“My parents need to know what Reagan told us. They need to understand that Nolan wasn’t the beginning of this.”

“They need information. You want absolution.”

I faced him again. “For what?”

“For dying.”