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“Yes.”
“He knew Rurik had me.”
Uncle Sal’s jaw tightened. “He knew Rurik took you from Boston. We don’t know what he learned after that.”
The hospital setup returned with enough force that I felt the table beneath my palms. The message telling me Dad had been hurt. Rurik stopping me before armed men could finish what someone had begun.
“Did Mac help arrange the hospital trap?”
“We haven’t found proof of that,” Dad said.
“But he knew I would come,” I said. “Just like last time.”
“Maddie,” Mom whispered. “Please come home. We’ll put every man Sal has around you.”
“Mac was one of Sal’s men.”
The truth struck all of them.
Uncle Sal looked away first. “I trusted him with my sister. With you. There was no door in my life that man couldn’t open.”
“He didn’t betray us once,” I said. “He had been betraying us before we ever called him family.”
Uncle Sal’s eyes returned to mine. “Whatever he felt for this family, he chose Sylvia when it mattered.”
“Tyran chose her too.”
No one contradicted me.
For years, I had believed the Society reached into families and corrupted what it found. That it located fractures, widened them, and slipped through the damage. The truth was worse. Sylvia hadn’t needed to break into our family. She had opened the door and given us two men we welcomed as our own.
Tyran’s disappearance had exposed one of them.
Mac had stayed behind long enough to make us believe we had found the rot.
“Mac is dead,” Duncan said. “He can’t hurt anyone else.”
“And Sylvia is still alive.” My voice remained strangely calm while everything inside me came apart. “Tyran disappeared, and we learned he had betrayed the family. Then he nearly killed my father for Sylvia. Mac stayed through all of it. He watched us discover what Tyran was, knew what Sylvia had ordered him to do to Dad, and kept working for her. How many more people are standing beside someone who trusts them while waiting for Sylvia to call?”
“We’re going through everything,” Uncle Sal said. “Every name, every account, every decision Mac touched. We’ll find out how deep it goes.”
“And then what?”
No one responded.
“We kill the men she used, search the homes they left behind, and discover the Society was already there before any of us knew to look.” I glanced down at Salvatore’s file. “How many people have to die before we admit hiding isn’t stopping her?”
“We aren’t giving up,” Dad said.
“I didn’t say we should.”
“What are you saying, baby?”
I looked at my father and couldn’t answer without revealing something I hadn’t fully understood myself.
“I’m tired.”
Mom reached toward the screen as though distance might yield if she wanted it badly enough. “Then rest. Let Rurik protect you until we figure this out.”
