Page 203 of The Final Cut

“Get in line.”

Delia looks down at the table like she wants to set it on fire with her mind. Her cheeks have a little color in them now, and I decide not to point that out because I value my life.

Marisol clears her throat. “As I was saying.”

“No,” Delia says. “We are absolutely not moving on as if Russian thundercloud Ken did not just insult my chair posture and then walk out before I could come up with a good comeback. I mean…the nerve of that man!”

Shiloh loses the fight and laughs. Even Nash’s mouth moves faintly. For one strange, impossible moment, Isabel’s terrace holds something close to normality.

Then Delia looks at the folder again, and the moment settles into purpose. She does take the formal head position.

There is no other clean way through.

She has the marks. The training. The recognition. The machinery. The people inside La Rosa know her face and her pain and the shape Isabel tried to force her into. They watched her stand in a church while her grandmother bled out on stone, and they watched her remain standing afterward.

They need someone to look at.

So they look at Delia.

But she is not Isabel. That becomes the first rule.

Reva does not become La Rosa. That becomes the second.

I stand beside my sister when the old guard comes in. I stand there when the women file through, one by one, to tell Delia which doors Isabel left locked and which girls were trained to smile through fear. I stand there while Marisol corrects records with a steady voice and shaking hands. I stand there when Deacon names men who need to disappear and Nash names assets that can become legitimate before anyone else grabs them.

I stand there because I survived the order. Because Isabel said kill the younger girl, and the younger girl grew up with teeth. That gives me a kind of authority I never asked for and don’t fully understand.

I am not a queen. I am the check.

The ghost at Delia’s shoulder. The warning. The proof that La Rosa’s old rules failed.

When Delia says punishment rooms are gone, I stand beside her.

When someone asks what replaces them, I say, “Nothing.”

When an old soldier laughs, Deacon takes one step forward, and the laugh dies.

When a woman with silver in her hair asks what happens to the children already promised, Delia says, “They aren’t promised anymore.”

When a man asks who will enforce that, Nash smiles. I’ve seen men pale less under gunfire.

By dusk, my feet hurt, my head pounds, and Isabel’s house has begun to feel less like a mausoleum and more like a crime scene being converted into something that might, with enough bleach and violence, become useful.

It won’t become good. I’m not naive enough for that.

Less hungry, maybe. Less cruel. A place with sharp teeth turned outward for once.

By the time we get back to Blackwood House, I’m running on fumes and spite.

Mostly fumes.

Cal is still alive. That update came during the last meeting of the day, and I had to step into a hallway to cry where only Ever could see me.

He is stable. Still sedated, with no new bleeding. I’ve decided to embrace the word stable for exactly as long as it behaves.

Delia and Marisol stay at Isabel’s house with Nash’s men, three women from La Rosa who have already chosen the new shape of things, and enough security to make the property look less like a mansion and more like a guarded embassy.

I come home.