Chapter 6

Then Mia's eyes shifted. Just a flicker. A look past Rayna's shoulder, toward the doorway behind her.

Rayna saw the calculation land.

Mia gripped her wrist tighter — and yanked Rayna's own hand up and slapped herself across the face.

The slap rang through the ballroom.

"Rayna —" Mia's voice broke beautifully. Tears spilled. "Why would you —!"

Rayna opened her mouth to say something cutting about —

And a body slammed into her from the side.

She didn't see him coming. She felt the shove — hard, deliberate, no half-measure in it — and then her back hit the carved stone edge of the fireplace mantel, low against her spine, and pain blew white through her whole body.

The whole ballroom had gone quiet. Fifty pairs of eyes. The capos' wives had even stopped pretending not to listen. Rayna saw, with a small distant part of her mind, that the string quartet had stopped playing.

"You've been like this your whole life," Ethan said. Quiet now. Cold. Each word landing exactly where he wanted it. "Spoiled. Cruel. Proud. I told myself for years there was something good underneath it. And now I see is a jealous, spiteful woman"

Rayna stared at him. Her back throbbed. Her vision blurred.

"Two girls raised under one roof," he said over her, "and Mia comes out loyal, comes out brave, comes out willing to die for this family — and you come out this."

He drew a breath.

"I don't know who taught you to be this person," he said. "But I'll tell you what I think. I think your mother died of you."

The world went silent.

Then her hand connected with his face.

Eight years. Eight years of marriage, in another life. Eight years of curses across the breakfast table, eight years of pins under his pillow and his arm thrown across her in his sleep anyway, eight years of every cruel thing two people could find to say to each other.

He had never crossed this line. Not once. Not even at the end.

The slap was clean. It rang. His head jerked half a degree to the side, and a red bloom rose at once along his cheekbone.

"You," she said. Her voice was perfectly level. "Of every person in this room, are the one with no right to speak about my mother."

She did not wait to see his face.

She turned, set her hand against the stone for balance, and started walking — slow, even, one foot in front of the other, because her lower back was screaming and she would die before she limped in front of any of these people.

She made it ten steps before her knees buckled.

Ethan was there before she went down.

He caught her without a word. He swept her up off her feet — one arm under her knees, one behind her shoulders — the way he had carried her exactly once in their first life, on the night of the last mission, after he had buckled his vest onto her.

His hands were shaking.

Behind them, Mia called after him—“Ethan, wait!”—but he didn’t stop.

He did not turn his head. He did not slow down. He carried Rayna all the way to the estate’s infirmary without another word.

The family doctor patched up her back. Bruised, not broken.

Ethan stood in the doorway, hands hanging at his sides.

When the doctor had gone, he opened his mouth.

“I didn’t mean it,” he said to the floor.

Rayna did not look at him. She rolled onto her side, away from the door, and pulled the blanket up to her shoulder. “Get out. I’m sleeping.”

A long silence.

"I'm sorry, Rayna."

She did not answer.

After a moment, the door clicked shut.

She lay still in the dark, listening.

A moment later, a muffled smack came from the hallway—the sound of a palm hitting a face.

Ethan had hit himself.

Rayna closed her eyes.

Two more days. Then I leave. Then he marries Mia. Then everyone gets what they want.

Everyone except me.