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The word entered the car and consumed the remaining air.

For years, death had belonged to Salvatore and to the version of me that stopped living when Sinclair had told me my husband was gone. Hearing Rurik place it in my future made it something else: the event that would leave him alone with everything neither of us had dared to say.

“I’m not dying.”

“Not yet.”

“Then start the car.”

Rurik didn’t move. “You have decided your death is inevitable, so now you are visiting everyone who might object before they understand what you are doing. Henry first. Your parents next. Who follows? Sinclair? O’Malley? Do you intend to make a schedule so no one feels overlooked?”

“Don’t make this cruel.”

“Cruel?” His composure fractured. He struck the steering wheel once with the heel of his hand, and the sound made me flinch. He noticed immediately. Regret crossed his face, but it didn’t soften his voice. “You are arranging your funeral while you are still breathing, and I am cruel because I refuse to drive you from one goodbye to another?”

“I am arranging protection.”

“You are arranging absence.”

“Sometimes absence is protection.”

“That is what Salvatore believed.”

My grief rose instantly, sharpened by defense. “Don’t use him against me.”

“Why not? You are using him against yourself.”

The words drove me back against the seat. Rurik turned toward me fully, one arm resting along the steering wheel. He looked exhausted and furious, but beneath both waited something I had seen growing for weeks and refused to name, because naming it would make me responsible for another heart.

“You have forgiven him for hiding the truth from you,” he said. “You understand why he decided secrecy was the only way to protect you. Yet the moment you reach the same conclusion, you begin making the same choices.”

“Salvatore was right.”

“He was dead.”

The answer came without hesitation. I recoiled as though he’d struck me.

Rurik closed his eyes briefly. When he opened them, pain had replaced some of the anger. “His intentions were right. His love was real. But he was still dead, Madigan. Whatever protection his silence gave you came with a grave. Don’t mistake the outcome for proof that he chose correctly.”

“He kept Henry alive.”

“And broke you so completely that you believe joining him is the only honest ending left.”

My breath stopped.

“That’s not what this is.”

“Then tell me what it is.”

I looked down at my empty hands. They still remembered Henry’s fingers curling around mine. “The Society marked Salvatore thirty-six hours before Nolan handed him over. He made plans, separated the evidence, and trusted almost no one. They found him anyway.” I forced myself to look at Rurik. “And now my name is on an authorization.”

His expression didn’t change.

“I have his files. I’ve spoken to Reagan. I know what Poseidon did and how the Society controlled those families. Sylvia knows what I have, and she’s already decided I’m worth killing for it.”

“Which is why you stay protected.”

“For how long? Another safe house? More guards? A different name?” I shook my head. “Salvatore tried all of it. An authorization doesn’t expire because I hide well enough.”