Page 155 of The Final Cut

“I asked her if she would be safe,” he says. “Specifically. She said she would be fine.”

I look at him.

He lifts one shoulder, sharp with frustration. “She didn’t sell it. Said no one is safe. Then she said she had to go before they knew she was gone.”

“Meaning they may know by now.”

“Probably.” He pushes away from the island and paces two steps before stopping himself. “If I had known the street was going to explode five minutes later, I’d have brought her back here myself. Put her in the trunk if I had to.”

“No.” Ever’s answer is immediate. “You would have brought a tracked asset into the only location Isabel does not have yet.”

Shiloh turns on him. “Asset?”

Ever’s face doesn’t move. “That is what Isabel has made her.”

The kitchen goes still again, uglier this time.

Shiloh swallows whatever he was going to say. It costs him. “I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I,” I say.

And I don’t. There’s so much about this that I don’t like.

I don’t like Marisol walking back into whatever leash Isabel keeps around her throat.

I don’t like Delia sleeping ten steps away without telling us about her mother. Why the hell didn’t she just tell Reva her mother was alive?

I don’t like Reva being asked to absorb one more truth before the last one has stopped bleeding.

I don’t like Deacon at the hospital with his side torn open and his past closing in.

I don’t like Cal unconscious while people make decisions around him he would hate.

But it’s useless to not like that which we cannot change. We have to acknowledge it and then use it.

That is what Isabel understands. Structure. Lineage. Obedience. Punishment. Her world is not only guns and money. It is ritual, blood, legitimacy, history wrapped in a rosary and used as a chain.

We have been treating all this stuff we don’t like as something to protect against. That’s not enough.

Protection keeps Reva alive today. Maybe tomorrow. It does not end the thing hunting her. It does not free Delia from the shape of the life Isabel carved into her. It does not give Marisol a place to stand when she finally steps out from under her mother’s shadow. It does not keep La Rosa from swallowing whatever woman is left nearest the chair when Isabel falls.

Because that is the truth sitting beneath all of this. Killing Isabel is simple compared to what comes after.

A bullet can end a woman. It cannot end an organization built to survive dead leaders. Remove Isabel without a replacement, and a vacuum opens. Men with guns fill it, but the women pay first.

Girls disappear. Girls like the ones Deacon and I have been quietly moving out of La Rosa for years. Girls who were given a choice, a real one, and a job at Noir if they wanted work that didn’t come with a chain around their throat.

If Isabel falls without someone strong enough to control the wreckage, those girls don’t get out.

They vanish.

Permanently.

The soft places Marisol protected, the leverage Delia understands, the failed-death mythology clinging to Reva’s name—all of it becomes meat for whoever reaches the throne fastest.

Delia has legitimacy.

Reva has the story Isabel tried to bury and failed.