“Two minutes,” Ghost says.
Will’s thumb moves once across the back of my hand.
Ghost’s eyes flick once to the laptop, then to Sin.
Sin doesn’t move, he doesn’t speak, just holds his gaze, watching a fuse burn toward something he’s already committed to.
Ghost gives a single, decisive nod.
“It’s out.”
The room freezes.
Two seconds of absolute stillness.
Then Deek exhales, like he’s been holding his breath since 2019. “Well,” he says. “If we don’t get murdered now, it’ll honestly feel anticlimactic.”
Someone barks a laugh. Then another. Then Nitro swears loudly enough to wake the dead and slams his hand on the table.
Chairs scrape, boots hit floorboards, and the tension that’s been strangling the room for weeks finally snaps.
Koa grabs Ghost by the shoulders and shakes him hard enough to rattle his teeth. “Tell me you triple-checked it.”
“I quadruple-checked it,” Ghost mutters, already trying to escape.
Deek lifts a bottle off the table and smacks it into Sin’s chest. “Congratulations, boss. We just committed federal chaos.”
Sin doesn’t smile.
But he does drink.
And that’s when the room really detonates.
***
It’s late before people start leaving or heading to their rooms. Later than it should be, probably, given that Dad is home and is expecting me before too long, but the brothers don’t want to break apart, and I understand why. These nights don’t come often. The ones where something that has been pressing on a group of people for a long time finally lifts, and you can feel the air change.
I want to stay inside this bubble for a little while longer.
Victoria is the first to head to bed, which she announces by trying to stand from the sofa, then taking Sin’s hand with the dignity of being six months pregnant and not about to pretend the sofa isn’t trying to eat her. “I’m going to sleep for fourteen hours,” she says, and means it.
“You’ll sleep for four and then start reorganizing the nursery,” Sin says.
“That is a terrible thing to say, but it’s also completely accurate,” she replies, and allows him to steer her toward the door.
She stops beside me on the way to the hall. Her eyes are warm, a little tired, and completely her. “He’s going to be okay,” she says, and she means my father.
“I know,” I say.
She squeezes my hand once, and then she goes.
Will and I are among the last. We sit at the bar when the room has thinned, just the two of us and the low sound of the clubhouse settling around us, the television finally off, the overhead lights turned down to the warmer set Ro switches to when the night is winding out.
I’m not thinking about anything in particular, just sitting with the weight of the last few weeks and letting it redistribute now that some of it has been set down.
“He’ll want to know,” I say, after a while.
“Yeah,” Will says.
