“It could have been manipulated.AI and all.”Raven sighs.“My God.Will this ever end?”
Vinnie stares like he can force the pixels to confess.“I can’t believe I let a photograph convince me,” he mutters.“I didn’t even think about AI.I should’ve verified a dozen ways.I?—”
“Hey.”Raven squeezes his arm.“You wanted it to be over.We all did.”
“That’s the point,” he snaps.“Hecounted on that.Slippery son of a—” He breaks off, shakes his head.“From now on?I don’t outsource death.I do it myself.Hands on.”
The room goes still.
Raven freezes.
No words.
Did Vinnie just vow to kill his enemies?To pull the trigger himself?
“Vinnie,” Raven finally says, her voice calmer than I expect.“You fought hard to go legitimate.That’s not your life anymore.”
He looks at her.Some of the fury in him unclenches.“You think I don’t know that?”
“I think you do,” she says.“I also think you need to hear it said out loud before you pick up a gun and go after all the monsters in the world.”
He stares at the frozen image a second longer and then looks away.“He was supposed to be dead,” he says, quieter now.“Twice.”
“Maybe it isn’t him,” Raven says.“Hood or no hood, it’s grainy.Lots of men have that jawline.It could be?—”
“It’s him,” I say.“I know it.Vinnie knows it.We’ve both memorized his features.”
I don’t raise my voice.I don’t need to.And they both know it.
“It’s him,” Vinnie says.“The one who called me Little Cobra.The one you…” He sighs.
“That’s not a face you forget,” I add.“Not when it’s the face that laughed while it stole your life.He chose Belinda on purpose.Trapped her in his game with the information about her father being the bait.But it’s not Belinda he wants.”I pause a moment, gulp down nausea.“It’s me.”
“This isn’t your fault, Dani,” Raven says and then she sears her gaze into Vinnie.“Nor yours, either.We agreed to give her normal.Not give her the whole truth about Declan.To let her be a kid for as long as possible.It was the right call.She’s eleven.”
“She’s eleven,” I echo, and something inside me snaps.“And she still went out that door in the middle of the night to meet a stranger.”I tip my chin toward the screen.“Because curiosity doesn’t care whether you made the right call.”
Vinnie rises slowly.“We’ll find her,” he says.
It’s not a platitude.It’s a sentence delivered like a verdict.
“We will,” Raven echoes.
I leave the family room and walk to the kitchen, open the back door to the dark night.The air is humid and filled with the chirping of cicadas.
I clench the doorframe until my knuckles ache.
Behind me, Raven says my name softly.I turn.
“You okay?”she asks.
I huff out a humorless laugh.“Absolutely not.”
“Good,” she says, coming closer.“If you tell me you are, I’ll know you’re about to do something reckless.”
“Define reckless.”
“Going alone,” she says.“Going silent.Going right to the edge because you think you belong there more than you belong in a house with people who love you.”
