"Ring finger. Left hand." He looks at me. "Guess I'll never marry."
The joke is terrible and perfect and so completely Finn that my eyes burn. I think about rings. About the one on my own left hand. About the promises that ring represents and the promise I'm breaking every hour I stay silent. Finn lost the finger that carries a vow. I'm carrying a vow I can't speak.
I swallow it. Now is not the time.
The nausea hits. Sharp and sudden, rising without warning. I turn away from Finn. Breathe through my nose. Press my fist against my mouth. Force the wave back down. The acid burns my throat.
Finn watches me. "You okay?"
"Adrenaline."
He accepts it because he's running on his own and doesn't have the bandwidth to question mine. A medic approaches. Declan is there, one hand on Finn's shoulder, the enforcer's face cracked open in a way I've never seen. The brothers.
I should stay. The medic is wrapping Finn's hand. Declan is talking to him in low tones. The extraction vehicle is fifty yards away. I should stay with my brother and let the professionals handle what's inside.
I don't.
"I need to go back in."
Finn's good hand catches my wrist. The humor is gone. His one open eye is sharp and clear and entirely serious.
"Siobhan. Whatever's happening in there. You don't have to be part of it."
"Yes, I do."
He studies me. Sees what he's always seen: the sister who assessed their father's empire with clearer eyes than any of his sons. The woman who married a stranger because she saw the strategic necessity before anyone else in the room. The person who has been making hard decisions since she was twelve years old and watching powerful men fail to make them.
His hand loosens.
"Be careful."
"I always am."
I go back in.
The building smells like gunpowder and blood and the ozone tang of recently fired electronics. I find Nico in the central bay. He's standing over a man on the floor. Bratva soldier: thigh wound, conscious, back against a shipping container. His eyes move between Nico and the Glock and calculate identical odds everyone calculates when they're looking at my husband's face from this angle.
"Where is Viktor?"
The soldier speaks. Accented. Strained. "Gone. Knew you were coming. Left an hour before."
Viktor knew. Left an hour before the breach. Someone told him. The tactical impossibility registers in my mind alongside the pregnancy and the nausea and the image of Finn's bandaged hand: another variable, another threat, another piece of a pattern I can't fully see yet. I file it. Later.
Nico's jaw tightens. "Where did he go?"
The soldier gives a location. A fallback facility outside the city. Then more: Dmitri Reznikov's communication schedule. Supply routes. The names of three informants inside the alliance. Low-level operatives. Watchers. People who passedinformation for money without caring what it was used for. The intelligence flows because the soldier can see the math: talk and live, silence and don't.
When the man finishes, quiet settles over the bay. Nico looks at me. Not for permission. For my assessment. The way he's looked at me since the first day in his office: as a partner whose judgment he values.
"He has information," I say. "Viktor's fallback. Supply lines. The moles."
"We have it now."
"He's seen my face." I hear my own voice: flat, clinical, Ward Risk Advisory assessing operational security for a client who happens to be myself. "He knows my name. He was in the room when Viktor discussed the operation. He'll report to whoever's left."
Nico waits. He knows what I'm saying. He's giving me the space to say it.
"He can't leave here."