Page 52 of The Silent Hour

My Tato was down at the stables, likely terrorizing some young handler who'd made the mistake of suggesting he take it easy. Even with joints that creaked louder than his saddles these days, he refused to surrender a single training session to anyone else. Those horses were his religion. They had been since before I could form memories.

Fridays at my parents' house had become routine for me.

Every week, I came. Every other weekend, they took Aria and Ellie and practically banned me from interfering with their time.

Our girls, they called them.

And honestly, they were.

My daughters belonged to Ethan and me, but there were pieces of them that belonged just as fiercely to the people who'd raised us. It was my parents' way of guarding tradition. Of reminding me that family roots had to run deeper than whatever world Ethan and I had built around ourselves.

Those weekends when they had the twins gave us a luxury most parents with kids could only dream of in their exhausted, touched-out fantasies. Pockets of uninterrupted silence. Time that wasn’t just ours together, but mine alone, his alone too. The kind of alone time that let us remember who we were when no one was asking for juice or crying over math homework.

I loved my husband with a ferocity that still surprised me, but if we spent twenty-four hours a day fused at the hip, one of us would eventually end up compost for the bougainvillea climbing our back fence. Probably him. It wasn’t because I loved him less, but because I liked him enough to know we couldn’t survive on just each other.

He needed more than the firm and coming home to me and the girls. We spent time as a family, of course. We traveled to Italy last spring, Costa Rica before that. As just a couple, we went out for dinners that didn’t end at seven p.m. But Ethan also needed things that belonged only to him.

He liked to surf and frequented pool halls with the guys. Now, with him circling something bigger than even the Ruiz case, I knew his hours would stretch thin again. His texts would come late. Dinners would go cold in the microwave or fridge, but it wasn’t forever.

I’d married this man with my eyes wide open. He championed every ambition I ever whispered; I would armor his in return.

“So.” Mama folded another piece of dough with surgical precision, her knuckles dusted white. “Your husband tells you he might take on Cortez.”

“Yep.”

“You know what that family is.” She wiped her hands on her apron, flour blooming like smoke in the morning light, and finally turned toward me. “They’ve been moving filth through this city since before you were born. His father built their fortune in blood, Julia. Neighborhoods silenced. Judges bought. Politicians kept in pockets.”

Her mouth tightened.

“And Dominic...” She shook her head slowly. “They’ve been trying to build a case against that man for years. Do you understand what it means that they finally have him locked away? How many bodies had to pile up before they managed it?”

I already knew. Hearing my mother say it carved the reality a little deeper, like a blade tracing old scars.

“He texted me when he got to work.” I reached for my mimosa; the glass was slick with condensation. “He’s meeting Cortez today at Coleman. I told him to take Eric.”

"Good. Eric is a good boy."

I refrained from rolling my eyes, so I didn’t get knocked off my stool. If Eric ever started a fan club, Mama would be his number one fan.

"I need to know whether Cortez is the kind of man who'll let Ethan walk away after hearing him out without deciding our family suddenly knows too much, and if Ethan does take the case, I need to know he and the others can control what comes with it."

Mama nodded once. "Smart. You learn what kind of animal is in the cage before you decide whether to put your hand through the bars."

I took a sip, humming in agreement.

"You don't seem afraid," she added, glancing at me sidelong.

I arched a brow. "Would you be?"

Her laugh was soft, almost indulgent. "You know the answer to that, dytyna." She turned back to her cooking. "Now, what else is new in your life since we last spoke?"

I sighed, a long, low rumble that felt like my frustration made audible. Mama didn’t lift her eyes from the splintered cutting board, its surface worn smooth by decades of knives.

“That is the sound of a woman fed up with something,” she remarked in that calm, measured tone of hers.

“An associate,” I muttered.

Her knife halted midair, blade glinting in the late afternoon sun. “Ah. A woman, then.”