I almost smile. “And he believes that?”
“For now.”
The phrase lingers.For nowmeans we have time. Time to make the story real.
“Let me know if there’s anything I should do.” The obedient son. The practiced voice of neutrality.
“Stay in Riverview. Handle your business. Let me worry about the LaRiccias.”
I end the call and open my laptop. Rico’s phone still pings from Bangkok every twelve hours. His social media is active—photos with women whose faces are conveniently blurred. Pre-death content, reworked with AI and queued to post automatically.
A dead man living his best life on Instagram.
I close the laptop.
Outside my window, Riverview continues its mundane existence.
People who have no idea how close they came to becoming collateral in a quiet war.
A war I may have started anyway.
My phone vibrates. Not my father this time.
Patient discharged this morning. Private transportation arranged as requested.
I delete the message.
She’s gone. As she should be.
I return to my spreadsheets. Order. Control. The only things that matter.
Luca’s suspicion is like a gas leak—silent, invisible, fatal if ignored. Four people know the truth.
Dom won’t talk. Ricky won’t talk. I certainly won’t.
And Emmaleen Rourke is?—
A knock.
I look up.
Time stops.
She’s standing in the doorway like a glitch in the simulation. Not in. Not out. Hovering between intrusion and invitation.
Another thrift-store tragedy: lavender cardigan with two different buttons, a floral dress in a color that can’t commit to peach or pink, combat boots that have survived things most soldiers haven’t. A canvas tote with a faded slogan about saving something—bees, trees, humanity—something destined to die anyway.
It’s a performance of carelessness so deliberate it borders on strategy. Every mismatched thread a manifesto. Every scuff, a declaration of defiance.
Her hair is in that same disobedient knot, strands escaping like they have better places to be. Freckles in full rebellion. Skinpale, translucent under the office lights, blue veins tracing a map of things I shouldn’t be looking at.
And the wound.
A precise, medic’s row of stitches—still red, still raw. Six days is not long enough to heal what was done.
Six days was only long enough for me to bury her.
“You left me money,” she says, voice steady despite the tremor in her fingers, “but neglected to leave clothes. Had to bribe a nurse for scrubs.”