Page 14 of The Next Lie

I stand, because if I stay at her feet, I may start confessing things just to see if honesty can buy back anything we lost. “The assignment that ended our time with the Syndicate,” I say. “It involved your family.”

The bathroom goes silent, the air heavy with steam and the weight of the past. Reva stares at me, her face draining of what little color it had left. “Say that again.”

“The assignment that made us walk away. It was your family.”

Ever growls, low and dangerous. "Shiloh."

“She deserves to know that much,” I tell him. “Nash isn't here, and Deacon is. She’s standing in the middle of it.”

Reva’s fingers dig into the edge of my shirt. “What assignment?”

“Mother Superior wanted the adults killed,” I say, the words tasting like copper. “And one daughter. She wanted the other daughter brought to her.”

Reva stops breathing. Her lips part, but no sound comes out. I hate Mother Superior in that moment with a purity that almost steadies me. I have hated her for years—for what she made us, what she asked of us, what she dressed up as loyalty. But looking at Reva now, stripped nearly bare in my bathroom with grief standing all around her, I realize my hate was far too small.

“What?” she says, the word barely a puff of air.

Ever steps in then, kneeling in front of her so he’s at her eye level. “We did not take the job,” he says, his voice a steady anchor. “We refused. All three of us. Nash, Shiloh, me. We refused.”

Her eyes search his face, then mine. “You knew?”

“We knew there was an assignment,” I say. “We knew who it targeted. We did not know the details of where or when after we refused. We were cut out.”

“It was Deacon who brought the assignment to you.” It's not a question. Her perception is uncanny.

I nod once. She closes her eyes, and another tear slips down her cheek. “And he still did it.”

“Deacon stayed,” Ever says. “We don’t know exactly what happened after that.”

“But he was there.”

Neither of us lies. “Yes,” I say.

Her hand goes to her throat. “And that was...the end...of your time with the Syndicate. And Deacon?”

“That was the end of us with him, too,” I say. It’s a bitter truth. Nothing with Deacon ever ends cleanly—it frays, it stains, it waits in dark corners. But that night was the break. The moment the four of us stopped being four.

Reva stares at the tile between her feet, steam curling around her calves. “One daughter collected,” she says slowly. “One daughter killed. How were you supposed to choose?”

It’s such a Reva question. Practical. Horrific. “We weren’t given that information,” I say.

“Someone was.”

“Yes.”

She swallows hard. “Mother Superior?”

“Most likely.”

“And Deacon?”

“I don’t know. I’m telling you the truth, Reva. I don’t know how much he knew before the job went bad.”

“Went bad.” She laughs under her breath, a hollow sound. I deserve that. What else do you call the destruction of a life? “What should I call it?” I ask quietly.

Her head snaps up, eyes shining with a sudden, fierce light. “My family dying. My sister being taken. Me being left in a closet with bodies under sheets. You all walked away, and then what? You never checked? Never asked what happened to the family?”

Ever flinches. I don’t. “No,” I say. “We checked. We couldn’t find enough. Mother Superior locked it down. The official story was a home invasion. By the time the smoke cleared, the trail was ash. We were out, hunted in our own way, cut off from the channels that would have told us the truth.”