"Tell me you didn't just blow our cover to play hero."

  "She's fine."

  "That's not the point, and you know it." His voice was tight with controlled anger. "Anthony just reported a mugging where the perpetrator was taken down by an unknown assailant with professional training. Apparently he has a broken nose, dislocated jaw, a broken arm and three broken ribs. Want to guess where this happened?"

  I shrugged. “Must have been a nasty fall he had.”

  "Right outside your supposedly wife's therapy appointment. Coincidence?"

  Definitely not a coincidence.

  "Someone had to act," I said finally. "Her security was too far away."

  "So you compromised our entire operation? We agreed—no contact until we can guarantee her safety."

  "We didn't agree to shit." My voice came out harsher than I'd intended. Hector pinched the bridge of his nose. Think this is about me," Hector said grimly. "He suspects me. That's why he sent me to make sure Morgan died during bombing. He wasn’t following up on Marco’s work. When you were the one in that car, it got sloppy. I had to go back to the death records and replace Morgan's information with a John Doe's since you're not in any system. He might think I’ve contacted her and wants proof of that."

  My stomach dropped. "Fuck. He sent someone to check?"

  "More likely he’s got eyes on her and sent someone to see if I’m protecting her. He was already watching me like a hawk. And now you’ve intervened." Hector's voice was tight with controlled anger. "So your impulsiveness put a target on our back. If you're dead, then who else would save Morgan? It's possible that Pierce's men are protecting her, but if I were the old man, the coincidence would make my ass itch and I'd be real squirrelly about me."

  The guilt hit like a physical blow. "What was I supposed to do? Leave her?"

  "SHE HAD FUCKING SECURITY!" Hector bellowed.

  I didn’t back down. “That motherfucker had a knife and shoved her down. I had to do something.”

  "You fucked it and played out hand too early. All you’ve done is pique the old man’s interest. He’ll escalate to see if I do anything." Hector continued. "They'll send someone better next time."

  "Maybe that's what we want," I said, watching Morgan's car pull away with Anthony at the wheel. "Maybe it's time to stop hiding and start fighting back."

  "Lance—"

  "No, listen to me. This passive bullshit isn't working. Gathering evidence, building cases, playing by rules that grandfather doesn't follow—it's too slow. He's getting bolder."

  And every day I stay dead is another day she suffers.

  "These things take time. You can't just⁠—"

  "We don't have time." The words came out like a growl. "Every day I stay buried is another day she thinks she's losing her mind. Another day she blames herself for surviving when I didn't."

  Another day she suffers for the choices I made.

  "You have to stay away from her," Hector said firmly. "At least until we know what grandfather's planning next."

  Like hell.

  "I can't do that."

  "You have to. One more intervention like today and they'll know exactly who's protecting her. They'll know you're alive."

  "Maybe that's not such a bad thing."

  "It's a terrible thing!" Hector exploded. "Jesus Christ, Lance, use your head. If grandfather knows you survived, he'll come at her with everything he has. Not tests, not probes—everything."

  He was right. Of course, he was right.

  But watching Morgan question her sanity, watching her think she was paranoid when her instincts were actually correct—it was killing me.

  "She deserves to know the truth," I said quietly.

  "She deserves to stay alive. And right now, those two things are mutually exclusive."

  "P.S. Good Samaritans don't hit pressure points with surgical precision, Lance. They don't know exactly where to strike to incapacitate without causing permanent damage." Hector stood, starting to pace like a caged predator. "Good Samaritans call 911 and hope for the best."

  He's right. Of course he's right.

  The thing was, I'd known better. I'd known exactly what I was risking by intervening. But the moment I saw that piece of shit grab Morgan's purse, saw her stumble in those ridiculous heels—logic had gone out the window.

  She could have been hurt.

  "Someone had to act," I said finally. “That piece of shit grabbed my wife?"

  Shit. Wife. Not widow. Wife.

  The word hung in the air between us like a challenge.

  "She's not your wife anymore," Hector said quietly. "You're supposed to be dead, remember? Dead men don't have wives."

  The words hit me hard, stealing the air from my lungs. "Don't."

  "Don't what? Don't remind you that grandfather tried to have Morgan killed? That you barely survived because you happened to be in her car instead? And now you're risking everything by playing hero?"

  That I had no choice in any of this.

  "I didn't choose this," I said through gritted teeth. "I didn't choose to let her think I was dead."

  "And now you're fucking it up by playing hero in broad daylight." Hector's voice was getting that controlled edge it got when he was really pissed, the tone that used to make our childhood staff scatter. "Do you have any idea what you've done?"

  I saved her from getting mugged.

  "I saved her."

  "You compromised our entire operation." He moved to the floor-to-ceiling windows, looking out at the city skyline. "Every time you get close to her, you put her at risk. You know this."

  I know.

  The guilt settled over me like a lead blanket. He was right. Of course, he was right. But watching Morgan through surveillance feeds, seeing her fall apart while I hid in the shadows—it was killing me faster than any bomb could.

  "She deserves to know the truth," I said quietly.

  "She deserves to stay alive," Hector shot back. "And right now, those two things are mutually exclusive."

  Are they, though?

  I thought about Morgan chasing down that mugger in heels. The fire in her eyes, the way she'd refused to give up. She wasn't the fragile thing everyone kept treating her as.

  "Maybe we're wrong about that," I said.

  "Maybe." Hector turned back from the window, his expression softer now. "But are you willing to bet her life on it?"

  No. Never.

  "Then we stick to the plan," he said. "Gather evidence, build the case against grandfather, and keep you dead until we can guarantee her safety."

  The same fucking plan we'd been following while Morgan withered away believing I was gone.

  "The plan isn't working," I said.

  "It's working fine. You're the one who keeps deviating from it."

  Because the plan is bullshit.

  I moved to the window beside him, looking out at the city lights. Somewhere out there, Morgan was trying to piece her life back together without me. Going to therapy, forcing herself to work, pretending to be okay when she was anything but.

  All because telling her the truth would put a target on her back.

  "How much longer?" I asked. "How much longer do we make her suffer?"

  "As long as it takes." Hector's voice was firm. "I know it's hard, Lance. But if grandfather even suspects you're alive⁠—"

  "I know." I cut him off before he could finish the thought. "I know what he'd do."

  Use her to get to me. Hurt her to break me. All the nightmare scenarios I'd been running through my head on an endless loop since the explosion.

  But how long can she hold on?

  "She deserves to know the truth," I said again.

  "She deserves to stay alive. And right now, those two things are mutually exclusive."

  The truth of it sat heavy between us. I wanted to argue, wanted to find some hole in his logic that would justify telling Morgan everything. But I couldn't. Not when her life was the price of my selfishness.

  "We need to accelerate our timeline," I said. “Staying away is not an option.”

  He narrowed his gaze and let out a long-suffering sigh. "What timeline? We don’t have anything yet. Before you demand timelines, you might want to ask what I found in Marseille. Then I’d tell you it wasn’t much. I found a pressure point to use on Pernaut. But he’s been in prison for over a decade. He doesn’t have anything new to give us. But he did give me a lead; which I chased down and was all excited to tell you about until I got the call that my baby brother was out cosplaying the friendly neighborhood spider-man.”

  My ears perked up at that. “What did you find?”

  Hector studied me for a long moment, and I could see him weighing options, calculating risks.

  "Francois hadn’t been part of the job. He was a low-level runner who ran with some members of the DuLac clan. He overheard some dealings. But nothing concrete. He said from what he overheard, our mother hid a file somewhere safe. Somewhere we could access but grandfather couldn't. A file he was desperate to recover, and that means it can definitely bring him down. The men were to search the house, her car, and her person. All bank deposit boxes, but hadn’t come up with anything. And Grandfather got impatient."

  Somewhere only we would know to look.

  "That narrows it down to about a million locations."

  "Not quite." Hector pulled out his phone, swiping through photos until he found what he was looking for. "He said they called it the Monserrat file. Unfortunately, prelim searches have come up empty. Except for a small coastal village that seems like the internet left behind."

  Unfortunately, the name Monserrat triggered zero memories.

  I tried to think back to those early years, to memories I'd spent decades trying to forget. The compound in Marseille. Our mother's private rooms. The garden where she'd taught us about plants and poetry while grandfather trained us to kill.

  "The garden," I said suddenly. "The rose garden behind the east wing. She used to take us there."

  "That's on the compound. Grandfather would have found anything there years ago."

  Right. Too obvious.

  "What about her apartment in Paris? The one she kept before she married Dad?"

  Hector shook his head. "Sold off after her death. Everything in it was auctioned."

  Fuck.

  We stood there in silence, both of us reaching back through decades of trauma and carefully constructed walls, trying to remember a woman we'd barely known.

  "What if the file doesn't exist?" I asked. "What if our mother destroyed it before she was killed?"

  "Then we're no worse off than we are now." But I could see the fear underneath his confidence, the terror that this might be our last, best shot. "But if it does exist..."

  If it does exist, we might actually have a chance.

  For the first time in weeks, I felt something that wasn't despair or rage.

  Hope. Dangerous, stupid hope.

  "Where do we start looking?"

  "That's the million-dollar question, isn't it?" Hector sat back down, pulling out a small notebook. "Francois said she hid it somewhere we could find it, but grandfather couldn't. Somewhere that meant something to us but nothing to him."

  Somewhere personal.

  I thought about the woman in my memories—beautiful, sad, always watching us with a mixture of love and regret. She'd tried to protect us in the only ways she could, small acts of rebellion against grandfather's control.

  "She used to tell us stories," I said slowly. "Remember? Before bed. When grandfather was away on business."

  "Fairy tales. Knights and dragons." Hector's expression shifted. "She said we could be heroes instead of villains if we chose to be."

  Heroes instead of villains.

  The memory hit me like a freight train. I could see her sitting on the edge of my bed, her voice soft in the darkness, telling me that I didn't have to become what grandfather wanted me to be.

  That I had a choice.

  "There was one story she told us more than others," Hector said. "Do you remember?"

  I did. The story of a prince who'd been raised by monsters, who had to find his way back to humanity. Who had to remember who he was before the monsters made him into one of them.

  "She said the prince hid his heart in a secret place," I said. "So the monsters couldn't turn it to stone."

  Hector's eyes met mine, and I could see the same realization dawning.

  "She hid her heart somewhere the monsters couldn't find it," he said quietly.

  All we had to do was find it.

  Nine

  Morgan

  I should have known Atticus would lose his shit.

  He was waiting in the great room when I got back from giving my statement to the police, pacing like a caged predator in front of the floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked Central Park. The afternoon light streamed through the glass, casting long shadows across the polished hardwood floors and highlighting every sharp angle of his frustrated movements. His usually perfect hair was disheveled, his tie loosened and hanging askew, and there was a muscle jumping in his jaw that meant he was barely holding it together.

  The great room stretched out before us—all cream-colored furniture and carefully curated modern art, the kind of space that belonged in architectural magazines. Expensive and beautiful and utterly impersonal, except for the baby gear scattered across every surface like colorful evidence of real life happening in this pristine space.

  This should be interesting.

  "Are you okay?" he asked the moment I walked in, his eyes scanning me like he was looking for hidden injuries. "Did he hurt you? Did anyone check to make sure you weren't⁠—"

  "I'm fine," I interrupted, settling onto the plush sectional sofa that probably cost more than most people's cars. "Really. Just shaken up."

  And confused as hell about my mysterious savior.

  Gwen emerged from the nursery, bouncing a fussy Ava against her shoulder. The baby was clearly hungry, making those demanding little noises that newborns perfected within days of birth, and I could see the wet spot on Gwen's silk blouse where Ava had been doing her best impression of a barnacle.

  "How bad is it?" Gwen asked me, raising her voice slightly over Ava's increasingly insistent complaints.

  "The mugging? I got my purse back, the guy's in custody, and I'm not too hurt." I lifted my purse slightly, the leather still warm from my death grip on it during the police interview. "Mission accomplished."

  "Mission accomplished?" Atticus stopped pacing and stared at me like I'd grown a second head, his reflection multiplied in the windows behind him. "Morgan, you chased a criminal into an alley. In heels."

  Ava chose that moment to latch onto a section of Gwen's honey-blonde hair, tugging it toward her mouth with the single-minded determination of the truly hungry. Gwen winced slightly but didn't pull away, just shifted the baby to her other arm and tried to extract her hair without causing a full meltdown.

  "She's teething early," Gwen said absently, then looked back at me with concern. "But Atticus is right, Morgan. What were you thinking?"

  Here we go.

  "I wasn't thinking," I admitted, watching as Ava gave up on the hair and started rooting around against Gwen's chest, little fists batting at the silk in search of what she really wanted. "I just reacted."

  "Exactly." Atticus resumed his pacing, his footsteps muffled by the thick Persian rug but still somehow managing to convey barely controlled panic. "You saw danger and ran straight toward it. That's what scares me."

  Scares him. Not pisses him off. Scares him.

  There was something in his voice—a tremor underneath the frustration that I'd never heard before. Fear, genuine and raw.

  Gwen shifted Ava again, this time letting the baby find what she was looking for. Ava latched on immediately, her tiny fist curling against Gwen's chest as she settled into the serious business of eating.

  "Morgan," Gwen said softly, her voice taking on that gentle tone she used when she was trying to make a point without starting a fight. "I know you're grieving. I know everything feels surreal right now, like nothing matters because Lance isn't here to see it."

  The words jarred me harder than I'd expected.

  "But you matter," she continued, stroking Ava's downy head with one finger. "You matter to us. You matter to this little girl who will grow up hearing stories about her brave, brilliant aunt. You can't just throw your life away chasing purse snatchers."

  Throw my life away.

  "That's not what I was doing."

  "Wasn't it?" Gwen's eyes met mine, and I could see her own fear there—different from Atticus's panic, but just as real. "Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like you're trying to find ways to put yourself in danger. Like maybe you think you should have died instead of him."

  The accusation hung in the air like smoke.

  "Gwen—" Atticus started.

  "No, let me finish." She adjusted Ava slightly, the baby's contented suckling sounds the only peaceful thing in the room. "I've been watching you, Morgan. We all have. The way you talk about yourself, the way you act like your life doesn't matter anymore. It's terrifying."

  Because it doesn't feel like it matters.

  But I couldn't say that. Not when Gwen was looking at me with eyes that had seen too much loss already.

  "Atticus—"

  "Do you have any idea what it was like?" His voice was quieter now, more vulnerable, as he stopped pacing to lean against the window frame. The afternoon light caught the exhaustion in his features, the worry lines that had appeared since Ava was born. "Getting that call from Anthony, finding out you'd been attacked? Finding out you were hurt and I wasn't there to help?"

  Oh.

  I looked at him more closely, noticing the slight shake in his hands, the way he couldn't quite meet my eyes. This wasn't anger. This was terror.

  "I was barely hurt," I said gently.

  "It could have been catastrophic." He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it even more disheveled than before. "Jesus, Morgan, you could have been killed. And for what? A purse?"

  Lance's journal. But I can't tell him that.