Page 187 of The Final Cut

Marisol remains on the rug a few feet away, hands folded tightly in her lap. Reva looks at her.

“I don’t know how to do this with you,” Reva says.

Marisol’s throat moves. “Neither do I. We’ll figure it out together…if that’s okay?”

Reva nods and wipes her face with both sleeves and looks embarrassed by being seen on the floor. Pride comes back into her posture by inches. That matters too.

I stand first, then offer her my hand. She takes it and lets me pull her up.

Delia rises without help and pretends it doesn’t hurt. Shiloh notices and looks away because sometimes kindness is averted eyes. Nash moves to the door, opens it, and says something low to one of the men outside.

Water. Coffee. Clean towels. Space, disguised as logistics.

Marisol stands last. She looks unsteady.

Deacon stays near enough to help and smart enough not to touch.

Nash closes the door again.

“We continue,” he says.

Reva looks up. “Now?”

His gaze rests on her face. “You don’t have to.”

She looks at Delia, then Marisol, then Deacon by the door. Her hands curl and uncurl at her sides.

“I don’t want to stop.”

I believe her. Stopping would let the guilt catch up. Planning gives it a place to stand.

Nash nods. “Then we continue.”

We return to the desk in a looser formation. No one sits at first. The air has changed, though—it’s like we’ve all been stripped down to something more honest. Reva stays near Delia this time. Marisol stands on Delia’s other side. Three women with the same blood and three different versions of survival in their faces.

Nash looks at Marisol. “You said the problem began with succession. Training one daughter. Selling the other.”

Marisol nods.

“Then succession is also where we break it.”

A small shiver moves through Delia, but she doesn’t look away.

Deacon’s attention stays on the map. “Isabel’s power depends on belief. Bloodline. Fear. Continuity. If she loses one, she leans on the others.”

“We make her lose all three,” Shiloh says.

His voice is soft.

Nash glances at him. “Yes.”

Reva drags in a breath. Her eyes are still red, face streaked with tears, but something has sharpened in her expression. “How?”

I move to the desk and pull the map closer.

“We don’t do it with one hit,” I say. “One hit makes her a martyr or starts a scramble. We need pressure in multiple places. Money. Communication. Loyalty. Public image. Private fear.”

Ever the strategist, laying the puzzle pieces before them. That’s what they need from me now. So I give it to them.