Page 42 of Wicked Brutal

“Protecting Tobias isn’t hurting your mother,” Mom says.

“It’ll feel like it.”

“Probably,” Mom says. No lie. “But that doesn’t make it wrong.”

Arthur looks around the room. “We need more. And we get it correctly — not quickly. We don’t alert Roman, we don’t alert Tremblay, and we gather enough that when we finally move, there is no easy legal road left for him to drag Tobias back.”

“How long?” I ask.

“I don’t know.”

“No. I need better than that.”

“I don’t have better than that, Ryan. I won’t invent a number to make you feel better.”

“What if she’s showing next week?”

“Then we adjust.” Darla answers before I can push. “We control what we can control. Medical care stays invisible. Clothing buys time. We watch her health like hawks. And if her physical safety changes — if it becomes dangerous for her to be in that house — she leaves.”

Ally stiffens. “Without Tobias?”

Nobody wants to answer that. Arthur does. “If your immediate physical safety is at risk — yes. In that specific case, yes.”

“No.”

I turn toward her. “Baby—“

“No. I’m not leaving him.”

“I know.”

“That’s what he says,” she whispers. “He says I can go, I just have to leave Tobias.”

I wait until she’s actually looking at me. “But that’s not what this is. If Roman finds out and you’re in danger, I come for you first — because I can’t help him if you’re dead. And then I keep coming for Tobias. We all do.” I look around the room, at every single person in it. “Nobody forgets him because you got out. That’s not how this works. Not with us.”

“No,” Saoirse says.

“Never,” Mom says.

“Absolutely not,” Louise says, fierce.

Alice nods, and Katya says something quiet in Russian before adding, “Both children.” Ally looks at her, and Katya gestures at her stomach. “All of them. Every one.”

Arthur lets it settle, then looks around the room one more time. “We do this correctly. Everyone takes a lane.”

Arthur takes the legal framework, Callum working beside him. Dad and Thomas start mapping Roman’s political relationships. Mom takes my existing timeline and begins ripping it apart with journalist questions. Gideon starts identifying the public-facing relationships around both men — firms, media contacts, anyone whose name could matter if this ever goes public. Theodore takes the corporate structures, and Clifford joins him, because apparently money laundering looks enough like falsified research data that it personally offends him. Saoirse stays with Ally, and so do the girls. Darla owns the pregnancy. And Louise, Alice, Katya, and Mom keep drifting back toward Ally even while they’re working elsewhere. The mothers don’t stop circling. Not once.

At some point Iz walks past me and nods toward the couch. “Roman is so fucked.”

I look. Ally’s in the middle of it — Cat beside her with a notebook, Penny at her feet, Becca shoulder to shoulder, Saoirse on the arm, Louise bringing her food, Alice setting down tea, Katya adjusting the blanket over her legs, and Mom leaning in to show Cat something on her phone.

I narrow my eyes. “No.”

Mom looks up. “What?”

“Is that the baby shower spreadsheet?”

Cat immediately clutches the phone to her chest. “No.”