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“Rowen is safe,” Rurik said, lowering the bloodstained cloth. “Maxim confirmed it again ten minutes ago.”

“He was safe before he came looking for me.” I watched my hands instead of Rurik’s injuries. “Now someone has his blood on their floor.”

“The shooters may not have been there for you.”

“They fired at the couch where I’d been sitting.”

Rurik offered no reassurance after that. He had seen the bullets follow my movement, and neither of us could make the pattern less deliberate by refusing to name it.

“Rowen said it had to be him,” I continued. “He believes he can expose the truth and take whatever follows.”

“That is his decision.”

“No.” The answer came before anger could soften it. “That is how this keeps happening. Salvatore decided he could carry the files alone. You decided you could stand between me and every bullet. Rowen decided he could become the next man everyone hunts. Each of you call it a choice because you are the one volunteering to die.”

Rurik’s face tightened. “And what do you call what you are doing?”

I didn’t answer. The containment order already had, reducing my life to a problem requiring correction.

Rurik came to the other side of the table but didn’t sit. Exhaustion had made his movements heavy, though his attention remained fixed on me. “You promised not to leave me behind.”

“I remember.”

“That was not the same as answering me.”

“I don’t have another answer tonight.” I forced myself to meet his eyes. “Please don’t ask me for a promise fear will make me break.”

His pain moved quietly, without accusation. Rurik had learned not to demand what I couldn’t give, but restraint didn’t make the refusal wound him any less.

“Then promise you will remain in this house until morning,” he said. “Tomorrow, we contact your parents together. We decide what can be done without leading Sylvia to them or Henry.”

Morning felt impossibly far away. Salvatore had been given thirty-six hours, but my bullets had arrived before the ink on my order had time to dry. Still, I nodded because Rurik would not sleep while he believed the night could take me from the next room.

“Until morning,” I said.

Morning became the first of six we spent above the tailor shop.

Rurik contacted my parents shortly after sunrise. He placed the secured phone on the table between us and remained near the window while I told them about the attack at the pier. I left out the sound Rowen made when the bullet entered his arm and the terror in Rurik’s voice when I begged him not to die over me.

Mom cried quietly. Dad asked whether I was injured three times because the answer apparently couldn’t remain true longer than a few minutes.

“I’m safe,” I told him.

“For how long?”

The question silenced all of us.

Uncle Sal came onto the call before it ended. He didn’t ask where Rurik had taken me. For the first time since leaving Boston, he seemed to understand that knowing my location could become another weapon the Society used against us.

“We’ll find whoever authorized the attack,” he promised.

“The Society authorized it.”

“I’m not talking about the Society. I’m talking about the people who carried it out.”

“And then what?” I asked. “You kill them, and she sends more. How many people have to die before everyone admits this isn’t something we can shoot until it stops moving?”

Uncle Sal’s voice hardened. “What would you have me do, Maddie?”