The hearse pulled up the gravel drive at half past three in the morning, headlights cutting through fog that clung to the low fields like a burial shroud.
Ivan stood on the porch with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his fatigues, the signet ring cold against his finger. He'd been standing there for forty minutes. Waiting. The farmhouse behind him was lit in every window — Kimberly had seen to that, moving through the rooms with the quiet efficiency of someone who needed tasks to keep from thinking. Michelle sat on the stairs with a cup of coffee she hadn't touched. Rickey had been pacing the kitchen until Jennifer told him to sit the hell down before he wore a groove in the floorboards.
The hearse stopped.
For a long moment, nobody moved. The engine idled. The fog swirled. Then the driver's door opened and James Johnson stepped out, his face somber in the yellow porch light.
"Ivan."
"James."
They looked at each other across the yard. James had been the one to volunteer — said he'd done medical transport in the Corps, said it would be easier coming from someone who wasn't family. Ivan had argued. Then he'd stopped arguing. There were battles you fought and battles that fought you, and this one was already won.
Linda climbed out of the passenger side. She was carrying a leather medical bag that looked old enough to have seen two wars, her gray-streaked hair pulled back tight, her hazel eyes finding Ivan's across the dark.
"She's awake," Linda said. "She wanted to see the farm before she went inside."
Ivan's jaw locked. He didn't trust himself to speak.
The side door of the hearse opened — not a hearse anymore, he told himself, just a transport van, just a vehicle bringing his grandmother home — and two medics stepped out with a wheelchair. And in the wheelchair, wrapped in a wool blanket the color of old blood, sat Eleanor Nightsworn.
She looked smaller than she had in the hospital. That was the first thing Ivan noticed. The second was that her eyes — those blue eyes that had watched him sob over his parents' coffin — were still sharp. Still seeing everything. Still seeing him.
"Don't you stand there gawking, Ivan Leonardo," she said, and her voice was thin but it still carried. "Come help your grandmother into her house."
He was down the porch steps before he knew he'd moved. The gravel bit through his boots. The fog parted around him like something living. When he reached the wheelchair, he knelt.
"Gran."
She lifted one hand — the veins blue beneath papery skin — and placed it on his cheek. Her palm was warm. "You look tired."
"I'm fine."
"You're a terrible liar. Always were." She smiled, and it almost hid the pain beneath. Almost. "Take me inside. I want to see my kitchen."
Ivan lifted her from the wheelchair. She weighed nothing. Eighty years of strength and secrets and two thousand five hundred years of bloodline, and she weighed less than his combat pack. He carried her up the porch steps while the medics followed with the wheelchair and Linda walked beside him, her medical bag swinging.
The front door opened before they reached it. Kimberly stood in the threshold, her orange eyes wet, her face paint somehow still perfect — Viking on the left, Vlad on the right, war masks for a war that wasn't coming.
"Hey, Gran."
"Kimberly Anne. You've been crying."
"No."
"Don't lie to your grandmother. It's unbecoming." Eleanor reached out and caught Kimberly's hand as Ivan carried her past. "You're allowed to cry. I'm old, not deaf. I know what the doctors said."
Kimberly's jaw tightened. "We're not doing that tonight."
"We're doing whatever I say we're doing." Eleanor patted her hand. "Tonight, we're having tea. Tomorrow, you can be soldiers again."
The farmhouse swallowed them. Ivan carried Eleanor through the living room — past the worn leather couches, past the fireplace where embers still glowed orange, past the family photographs that lined the walls. Michelle stood as they passed, her black eyes tracking them, her coffee still untouched. Rickey and Jennifer were in the kitchen doorway, shoulder to shoulder, blocking the light.
"Move," Ivan said.
They moved.
The kitchen was warm. A kettle steamed on the stove. Someone — probably Melissa, who had the tactical sense to know when to make herself useful — had laid out Eleanor's favorite mug: blue ceramic with a chip in the rim, the one she'd used every morning for forty years. The tea was already steeping.
Ivan set Eleanor down at the head of the oak table. The same table where they'd briefed the Philadelphia assault. The same table where they'd planned a war. Now it held a mug of chamomile and a woman who had maybe four months to live.
"Sit," Eleanor said. "All of you. I can't talk to ghosts in doorways."
They sat. Kimberly to her right. Michelle to her left. Rickey and Jennifer across from each other. Melissa leaned against the counter with her arms crossed, her mismatched eyes — one ocean blue, one emerald green — fixed on Eleanor with something that looked a lot like grief. Jack and Stevenson were outside, Ivan knew, walking the perimeter. They'd insisted. He'd let them.
Linda set her bag on the counter and began unpacking. Vials. Syringes. A blood pressure cuff. The tools of palliative care. Ivan watched her hands move — steady, practiced, the hands of someone who'd done this before. Who'd sat with the dying. Who'd held their hands and lied about how much time was left.
Except Linda wouldn't lie. That was the thing about her. She'd looked at Eleanor's chart with those hazel eyes and said, "Two to four months. We'll keep her comfortable. We'll keep her here. But I won't pretend this ends any way but one."
Ivan respected that. He hated it. But he respected it.
"You're staring," Eleanor said.
"I'm thinking."
"Dangerous habit for a sniper." She lifted the mug with both hands, the blanket slipping from her shoulders. "What are you thinking about?"
He didn't answer. Couldn't. The words were there — I'm thinking about the funeral. I'm thinking about Mom and Dad. I'm thinking about Amber. I'm thinking about how everyone I love dies before I can save them — but they wouldn't come out. They never did.
"He's thinking about Baltimore," Kimberly said, and her voice was flat. "Sarah texted."
Ivan's head snapped up. "When?"
"Twenty minutes ago. While you were on the porch." She pulled out her phone, tapped the screen, slid it across the table. "Read it yourself."
The text was short. Three sentences. But they hit him like a round through the chest.
Don't come to Baltimore. Stay there. I'm okay — just do what I say.
He read it twice. Three times. His thumb traced the words on the screen like he could feel her through them. Sarah. Undercover. With Victor Reed. Telling him to stay put.
"She's scared," he said.
"She's smart," Michelle said. Her voice was quiet, surgical, exactly the way it always was. "If she says don't come, there's a reason."
"The reason is Victor Reed has her and she's trying to protect us."
"The reason," Eleanor said, and her voice cut through the kitchen like a blade, "is that Sarah Douglas knows exactly what she's doing. She's been trained since she was a girl. She's been undercover before. And she's right — if she says stay, you stay."
Ivan's fist clenched on the table. The signet ring dug into his finger. "I can't just—"
"You can. You will." Eleanor set her mug down. The clink of ceramic on oak was loud in the silence. "Ivan. Look at me."
He looked. Her blue eyes held him. Held all of him — the Reaper, the sniper, the grandson who'd sobbed over a coffin twenty years ago. She saw every version of him and loved them all.
"You have spent your entire life trying to save everyone," she said. "Your parents. Amber. The Chen family. Your team. Me." She reached across the table and took his hand. Her grip was weak but it didn't waver. "You can't save everyone. You can't save me. But you can trust the people who love you enough to fight their own battles."
"She's in Baltimore with a psychopath."
"She's in Baltimore with a psychopath who doesn't know she's a Nightsworn operative. She has training. She has backup. She has you — at a distance, which is exactly where she needs you right now." Eleanor squeezed his hand. "Did you text her back?"
Ivan looked at Kimberly.
"Not yet," Kimberly said. "Wanted you to read it first."
"Text her back," Eleanor said. "Tell her you're staying. Tell her you trust her. And then —" she leaned back in her chair, the blanket slipping further, revealing the hospital gown beneath — "you're going to sit here and drink tea with your grandmother. Because I am dying, Ivan. And I want one more night of normal before I go."
The word hung in the air. Dying. No one had said it out loud. Not in the hospital. Not in the car. Not in the doorway. But Eleanor said it like it was just another fact — like the color of the sky or the price of grain. I am dying. She was the only one brave enough to name it.
"Gran," Rickey said, and his voice cracked. His red eye and his black eye were both wet. "Don't—"
"Don't what? Don't tell the truth?" She turned to him, and her expression softened. "Rickey. My sweet boy. You've been fighting since the day you were born. Fighting to be seen. Fighting to be heard. Fighting to protect everyone you love." She reached for him with her other hand, and he took it like it was the only thing keeping him upright. "I'm not asking you to stop fighting. I'm asking you to let me fight my way."
"What's your way?"
"Dying at home. In my own bed. With my family around me and Linda Johnson keeping the pain at bay." She smiled at Linda, who'd stopped unpacking to listen. "Isn't that right, Linda?"
Linda turned. Her hazel eyes were steady, but there was something beneath them — something old and tired and deeply, deeply sad. "That's right, Eleanor. I'll be here day and night. Whatever you need."
"Then it's settled." Eleanor released Rickey's hand and picked up her mug again. "Now. Someone text Sarah. And someone else pour me more tea. And for God's sake, someone tell Jack and Stevenson to stop prowling the yard like wolves. They're scaring the chickens."
Jennifer laughed. It was wet and surprised and it broke the tension like a hammer through glass. She pushed back from the table, her yellow-orange-red-and-black eyes still shining. "I'll get the tea."
"I'll text Sarah," Ivan said.
He pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered over the screen. What did you say to someone who was walking into the dark and telling you not to follow? What did you say to someone who'd put her hand on your chest in a crypt and told you she knew what she was doing?
He typed: Okay. Trust you. Be safe. Come home.
He hit send before he could second-guess it. Then he put the phone face-down on the table and looked at his grandmother.
"Done," he said.
"Good boy." Eleanor took a sip of her tea. "Now. Tell me about the Henderson house. Kimberly said you gave it to the Smiths?"
"Maria and John. And Ian." Ivan felt something shift in his chest at the names. "They're moving in tomorrow. Today. Later today." He glanced at the clock on the wall. 3:47 AM. "They wanted to be close."
"They wanted to be close to you," Eleanor said. "That woman sees the light in you, Ivan. I saw it the moment she looked at you across the dinner table. She sees what Amber saw."
The mention of Amber's name hit him like it always did — a sucker punch he should've seen coming but never did. He'd been eighteen when she died. Eighteen years old, in basic training, getting the call from his grandmother while his drill instructor stood three feet away. He'd collapsed. Right there in the barracks. Right in front of everyone.
"Amber," he said, and her name felt heavy in his mouth. "She saw things that weren't there."
"She saw things that were there that no one else could see." Eleanor set her mug down. "So does Maria. So does Sarah." Her eyes narrowed. "So do I. I've been watching you for thirty-seven years, Ivan Leonardo Nightsworn. I've seen every version of you. The boy who cried over skinned knees. The teenager who enlisted because he wanted to be a hero. The man who came back from Vietnam with blood on his hands and silence in his eyes. And I'm telling you — there is light in you. There always has been."
"The voices—"
"The voices are quiet," Eleanor said. "You told me yourself. The Holy Spear silenced them. Whether that silence lasts ten minutes or ten years, it's proof. You are not broken. You are not the monster you think you are."
Ivan looked down at his hands. The left side of his body — the side he'd painted Vlad III, the side of the Reaper — was trembling. Just slightly. Just enough. He pressed his palm flat against the oak table and forced it still.
"I killed my own team," he said. "I performed a blood eagle on Striker. I left a Joker card on his chest." His voice was flat. Clinical. The way he always talked about it — like it had happened to someone else. "I'm not a good man, Gran."
"Good men don't stay up all night planning how to save their friends," Eleanor said. "Good men don't kneel at their parents' coffins and promise to make them proud. Good men don't carry the weight of everyone they love and never put it down." She reached across the table again. This time, she took his chin in her hand and forced him to meet her eyes. "Good men are a myth. But you — you are a good man anyway. Despite everything. Because of everything. Do you understand me?"
He didn't. But he nodded anyway. Because she was dying. Because she was his grandmother. Because if she needed him to believe it, he would at least try.
Linda cleared her throat. "I hate to interrupt, but Eleanor needs to rest. The trip was long, and her vitals—"
"I'm eighty years old, Linda. My vitals are whatever I say they are."
"Your vitals are telling me you need to lie down in the next twenty minutes or you're going to crash." Linda crossed her arms. Her voice was gentle but immovable. "I'm your doctor now. That means you listen to me."
Eleanor looked at her for a long moment. Then she laughed — a thin, reedy sound that turned into a cough halfway through. "Fine. Fine. You're as stubborn as your ex-husband was, you know that?"
Linda's expression didn't change. "Striker was a lot of things. Stubborn was the least of them."
The room went quiet. The name landed like a stone in still water. Striker. The man Ivan had killed. The man whose sons had come to Hubco to apologize. The man who'd betrayed his team in Vietnam and left the Chen family to die.
"Sorry," Eleanor said. "That was thoughtless."
"It was honest." Linda walked around the counter and crouched beside Eleanor's chair. "I loved him once. Then I learned what he was. Now I'm here, taking care of a woman I've only just met, because your grandson asked me to." She took Eleanor's hand. "That's the thing about the Nightsworns. They inspire loyalty. Even when they don't mean to."
Eleanor looked at Ivan. "You asked her to stay?"
"I did."
"Why?"
He didn't have a good answer. Or maybe he did, and it was too simple to say out loud. Because you're dying. Because I can't save you. Because Linda is the only person who's ever listened to the worst thing I've done and still looked me in the eye afterward.
"Because she's the best," he said. "And you deserve the best."
Eleanor's eyes glistened. She blinked, and the glisten was gone. "Sentimental fool."
"Learned it from you."
"Damn right you did." She pushed herself up from the chair, waving off Linda's help. "All right. I'm going to bed. Not because my vitals demand it, but because I'm old and tired and I want to wake up in my own room for the first time in two weeks."
Ivan stood. "I'll carry you."
"You will not. I can walk to my own bedroom." She took two steps. Her legs wobbled. She stopped. "On second thought, you may assist me. But you will not carry me. I have my dignity."
He put his arm around her waist. She leaned into him — more than she probably wanted to, more than her pride would let her admit. Together, they walked out of the kitchen. Through the living room. Past the family photos. Past the fireplace where the embers had died to ash. Down the hallway to the room at the end — the room that had been hers for sixty years, since she'd married Ivan's grandfather, since she'd raised her children, since she'd buried her husband and her son and now, finally, was coming home to die.
The room was ready. Kimberly had seen to that too. Fresh sheets. A vase of wildflowers on the nightstand. The window cracked open, letting in the smell of cut grass and the distant lowing of cattle.
"Your sister," Eleanor said, "is a marvel."
"She's all of us."
"She's the best of you." Eleanor let him ease her onto the bed. She sank into the mattress with a sigh that seemed to come from somewhere deeper than her lungs. "All of you. You're the best of me. You know that, don't you?"
Ivan pulled the blanket up to her chin. The wool was rough under his fingers. "I know."
"No, you don't. But you will." She closed her eyes. "When I'm gone. When you've had time to think. You'll understand that everything I did — everything your parents did — was so you could be here. Right now. With the people who love you."
"Gran—"
"Don't argue with your grandmother. I'm dying, remember? I get to be right about everything."
He laughed. It surprised him — the sound, the way it broke through the ache in his chest. "That's not how it works."
"That's exactly how it works. Now go. Let me sleep. Let Linda do her job. And tomorrow —" she opened one eye — "you're going to Baltimore. Not to rescue Sarah. But to be ready. There's a difference."
"You just told me to stay."
"I told you to trust her. That doesn't mean you can't be close." She closed her eye again. "I'm not sending you to war, Ivan. I'm sending you to the edge of the battlefield. The rest is up to her."
He stood there for a long moment. Watching her breathe. Watching the rise and fall of her chest beneath the blanket. She looked peaceful. She looked like his grandmother. She looked like a woman who'd made peace with the end.
He didn't know if he could make peace with it. But standing there, in the quiet of the farmhouse, with the signet ring cold on his finger and Sarah's text still glowing behind his eyes, he decided he would try.
"I love you, Gran."
"I know, sweet boy." She didn't open her eyes. "I've always known."
He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. Linda was waiting in the hallway, her medical bag in her hand.
"She's stubborn," Linda said.
"She's a Nightsworn."
"So are you." Linda studied him for a moment. "How are you doing? Really?"
"I'm fine."
"You keep saying that."
"Because it's true."
"It's not." She shifted her bag to her other hand. "I've been a trauma therapist for fifteen years, Ivan. I know what 'fine' looks like. It looks like someone who's holding themselves together with sheer willpower and hoping no one notices the cracks."
He looked at her. Those hazel eyes. That gray-streaked hair. She'd listened to him confess to murder and she hadn't flinched. She'd given him coping signals on a piece of paper that he still carried in his pocket. She'd agreed to move into his grandmother's house and watch her die.
"The cracks are showing," he said.
"I know."
"What do I do about it?"
"You let people help you." She reached out and touched his arm. Her hand was warm. "You let Maria and John move in next door. You let me take care of Eleanor. You let Sarah do her job in Baltimore. And you stop trying to carry the entire world on your shoulders."
"That's what I do."
"That's what you did. It doesn't have to be what you do forever." She squeezed his arm, then let go. "I'm going to check Eleanor's vitals and then I'm going to sleep. You should too."
"Baltimore is at dawn."
"Baltimore is at dawn," she agreed. "But you're not going to rescue anyone. You're going to be close. That's what Eleanor said."
"Eleanor's dying."
"Eleanor's wise." Linda opened the bedroom door. "There's a difference."
She slipped inside. The door clicked shut. Ivan stood in the hallway, alone, with his grandmother's words in his ears and Sarah's text in his phone and the weight of everything he couldn't control pressing down on his chest.
He walked back to the kitchen. Kimberly and Michelle were still at the table. Rickey was by the window, staring out at the fog. Jennifer was making more tea. Melissa had disappeared — probably to relieve Jack and Stevenson on perimeter duty.
"She's asleep," Ivan said.
They all looked at him. Their faces — painted and scarred and so goddamn beautiful — were the faces of people who'd been waiting for this moment for weeks. Months. Years. The moment when the matriarch of their family went to bed and never got up again.
But that hadn't happened. Not yet. Not tonight.
"Tonight she's still here," Ivan said. "Tomorrow we go to Baltimore."
"Sarah said—" Kimberly started.
"I know what Sarah said. We're not going to rescue her. We're going to be close. In case she needs us." He pulled out a chair and sat down. "Eleanor gave me orders. I'm following them."
Rickey turned from the window. His black eye was still wet, but his red eye was burning. "And if Sarah doesn't need us?"
"Then we come home." Ivan poured himself a cup of chamomile. The steam curled up into the lamplight. "And we wait."
"For what?"
He thought of his mother's laugh. His father's hands. Amber's eyes — blue, like Eleanor's, like the sky over the farm on a clear winter morning. He thought of Maria's voice telling him I see the light in you. He thought of Sarah's hand on his chest, steady and sure, telling him I know what I'm doing.
"For whatever comes next," he said. "The war's not over. Gran's not gone. And neither are we."
He drank his tea. The farmhouse settled around them. The fog pressed against the windows. And somewhere in Baltimore, Sarah Douglas was walking through the dark with a psychopath at her side, trusting that Ivan would do exactly what she'd asked.
Stay.
Trust.
Wait.
He was terrible at all three. But for her, for Eleanor, for everyone who'd ever believed in him — he would try.
The hallway outside Eleanor's room was too quiet.
Ivan stood with his back against the wall, chamomile going cold in his hands, watching the door like it might open and reveal something other than Linda Johnson checking vitals. His thumb found the scar on his wrist — the one from Fallujah, the one that still ached when the weather turned — and pressed. Not hard. Just enough to feel something that wasn't the hollow pressure in his chest.
The door opened.
Linda stepped out. Her face was wrong. Not the professional calm she'd worn since arriving at the farmhouse. Not the gentle grief she'd carried while accepting Eleanor's diagnosis. This was something else entirely. Her hazel eyes were bright with — what? Fury. And underneath that, something colder. Something that made Ivan's hand drop from his wrist and find the knife at his belt before he'd consciously decided to reach for it.
"I need all of you," she said. Her voice was steady, but the steadiness was the kind of thing you practice. "Now. Kitchen. Everyone who's in this house."
"What happened?" Ivan pushed off the wall.
"Kitchen." She was already walking. "I'm only saying this once."
He followed. Of course he followed. His boots were heavy on the floorboards, each step a count in his head — one-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three — until the rhythm steadied something in his skull that had started to rattle loose. Kimberly and Michelle were still at the table. Rickey turned from the window, his mismatched eyes catching the lamplight like two different fires. Jennifer set down the kettle before it could whistle.
"Melissa?" Ivan asked.
"Perimeter with Jack and Stevenson," Kimberly said. "What's going on?"
Linda set her medical bag on the table. Not gently. The contents inside clattered — vials, instruments, things that usually meant healing. She unlatched it and pulled out a slim tablet, her fingers moving across the screen with the precision of a woman who'd been doing this for decades. Her gray-streaked hair had come loose from its clip, falling around a face that was all hard lines and barely contained rage.
"I drew Eleanor's blood when I checked her vitals," she said. "Standard panel. Liver function, kidney function, tumor markers. Everything I'd expect from stage four cancer. But."
She stopped.
The word hung in the air like smoke.
"But what?" Michelle's voice was quiet. Surgical. That tone she used right before someone's world came apart.
"But I also ran a toxicology screen." Linda's eyes met Ivan's. "Because I've been doing this work for twenty-three years and I've learned to trust my gut when something doesn't add up. And something about Eleanor's presentation didn't add up. The rate of decline. The specific distribution of organ damage. So I looked."
Ivan's hand found the back of a chair. He didn't sit. Just held it. The wood was warm from Kimberly's body heat, still holding the ghost of her presence.
"What did you find?"
Linda turned the tablet around. The screen showed a series of numbers and graphs that meant nothing to him — chemical compounds, concentration levels, reference ranges highlighted in red. But Linda's finger tapped one line. One name.
"Nightshade extract. Atropa belladonna. And something called silverdrop. It's a synthetic compound — originally developed in the eighties as an insecticide, banned in 1992. It mimics natural toxins but accumulates in the liver over years instead of flushing out."
Kimberly stood up. Her orange eyes were burning. "Poison."
"Someone has been poisoning her," Linda said. "Low doses. Consistent. Long enough to look like natural disease progression. Long enough that by the time symptoms showed, the damage would be extensive. Irreversible. But not fast. Whoever did this wanted it to look like cancer."
Ivan's fingers tightened on the chair. The wood creaked.
"How long?"
"Given the concentration levels I'm seeing — six years. Maybe longer. The silverdrop traces are the key. It binds to liver tissue. The oldest deposits I can identify are from approximately 2020."
2020. The year the world shut down. The year Michael had started showing up at the farmhouse more often, claiming he wanted to help with Eleanor's care. The year she'd started drinking tea every afternoon — a specific blend, a specific ritual.
"Her tea," Ivan said. The words came out flat. Wrong. Like they belonged to someone else. "What's her favorite tea?"
He already knew. But he needed to hear someone say it.
Kimberly spoke first. "Chamomile and lavender. With honey. She's been drinking it since—"
"Since she was seventeen," Michelle finished. "Mama's recipe. She taught us all how to make it."
Rickey's red eye was blazing. "Michael's been making it for her."
The room went very still.
"Every day since 2020," Ivan said. "He shows up. He makes her tea. He sits with her. The dutiful grandson." His voice didn't shake. That was the worst part. It was calm and flat and utterly, completely dead. "I thought he was just an asshole who wanted control of the company. I thought the worst thing he could do was try to steal the farm."
"He's been poisoning her." Jennifer's voice cracked. Her yellow-orange-red-black eyes were wet, but her jaw was set like concrete. "Our own brother. He's been killing her. Slowly. For six years."
"It matches." Linda set the tablet down. Her hands were trembling now — the first crack in her professional facade. "The timeline matches. The dosage pattern matches. Every afternoon, a fresh cup. Every afternoon, another micro-dose of nightshade and silverdrop. Not enough to kill her immediately. Just enough to make her sick. Just enough to make it look like age. Like cancer. Like natural causes."
Ivan let go of the chair. He walked to the window where Rickey had been standing. The fog outside was thicker now, pressing against the glass like a living thing. Somewhere out there, Melissa was walking the perimeter with Jack and Stevenson, watching for threats that came from outside. But the real threat had been inside all along. Sitting at Eleanor's bedside. Holding her hand. Handing her a cup of tea with poison in it.
"We need to tread lightly," Linda said.
Ivan turned. "What?"
"I said we need to tread lightly." She met his eyes without flinching. "I know what you're thinking. I can see it. But if we confront him now, if we tip our hand, he'll destroy evidence. He'll lawyer up. He'll claim I fabricated the test results. You said it yourself — he's been trying to get control of the company. If Eleanor dies without exposing him, he might succeed."
"She's not going to die."
"Ivan." Linda's voice softened. "The damage is done. We can stop the poisoning. We can make her comfortable. But the cancer is real. The organ damage is real. Whether it started with poison or not, her body is failing. I can give her weeks. Maybe months. I can't give her years."
He wanted to break something. He wanted to put his fist through the window and feel the glass cut his knuckles and let the fog roll in and swallow him whole. He wanted to find Michael and do things that would make the Reaper in his head sit up and take notice.
But Eleanor was dying in the next room. And Sarah was in Baltimore. And six years of poison was already in his grandmother's blood.
"We investigate silently," Michelle said. It wasn't a question. Her black eyes were fixed on Ivan, reading him the way she'd learned to read targets through a sniper scope. "We find proof. We build a case. We make sure that when we move, there's nothing he can do to wriggle out of it."
"Agreed." Rickey's voice was a growl. "But when we have proof —"
"Then we bury him." Kimberly finished the sentence like it was a prayer. "Legally or otherwise."
Jennifer nodded. Her hands were clenched at her sides. "He dies in a cell or he dies in the ground. I don't care which."
Linda looked at Ivan. "This has to be your call. You're the one Eleanor trusts most. You're the one Michael tried to take down at the hospital. If we do this — if we investigate instead of confronting him right now — we're choosing patience. We're choosing to let him think he's getting away with it while we gather what we need."
Ivan thought of his mother's signet ring on his finger. The silver was warm against his skin. He thought of Eleanor's voice in the hospital, telling him to listen to Linda, to let her take care of things. He thought of Michael standing over him at the funeral when he was eighteen, telling him he should have been left in an orphanage. Telling him he was nothing.
Michael had been poisoning their grandmother for six years.
"We do it your way," Ivan said. The words tasted like ash. "We investigate. We gather proof. We build a case that he can't escape." He looked at his siblings — Kimberly, Michelle, Rickey, Jennifer. Their painted faces, their burning eyes. The people who'd held him when he sobbed over his parents' coffins. The people who'd never once made him feel like he was nothing. "And when we have everything we need — we end him."
"Agreed," Kimberly said.
"Agreed," Michelle said.
"Agreed," Rickey said.
"Agreed," Jennifer said.
Linda exhaled. The tension in her shoulders didn't release, but it shifted — from fear of what they might do to acceptance of what they would do. "I'll keep running tests. Document everything. The silverdrop is the key — it's so rare that anyone who had access to it will leave a trail. I have contacts at the DEA who can trace it."
"Rickey's DEA," Ivan said. "He runs their SRT. He can get you whatever you need."
Rickey was already pulling out his phone. "I'll make calls. Quiet ones. People I trust."
"I'll monitor Michael's financials," Kimberly said. "If he bought the poison, there's a money trail. Shell companies, offshore accounts — I've traced worse."
"I'll handle surveillance," Michelle said. "Michael doesn't know me. He never paid attention to any of us except Ivan. I can get close."
Jennifer stepped forward. "And I'll talk to Eleanor. Gently. She might know something without realizing it — times Michael was pushy about the tea, times he insisted on making it himself, times he brought her special blends."
Ivan looked at them. His family. His blood. His quintuplets in everything but Michael. "And me?"
"You do what Eleanor asked," Linda said. "You go to Baltimore. You be there for Sarah. You let us handle this part. Michael already hates you — if you start sniffing around, he'll know something's wrong. But if you're focused on the Black Hand, if you're out of the picture, he'll stay comfortable. He'll make mistakes."
She was right. He hated that she was right. Every instinct in his body was screaming at him to find Michael, to put his hands around his brother's throat, to make him confess. But that was the Reaper talking. That was the madness that lived in the back of his skull, the one that had gone quiet since he touched the Holy Spear but had never truly left.
"Fine." He said it like a concession, but it felt like swallowing glass. "I'll go to Baltimore. I'll be close for Sarah. But the second you have proof — the second there's enough to put him away — you call me. I don't care if I'm in the middle of a firefight. You call me."
"We will," Kimberly said.
"We promise," Michelle added.
Linda closed her medical bag. The latch clicked shut with terrible finality. "I'm going to take more samples. Blood, hair, tissue if Eleanor will allow it. I want to build a timeline that a prosecutor can't argue with. And I want to see if there's anything we can do to slow the damage — any way to give her more time."
"Do it," Ivan said. "Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs."
Linda nodded and turned toward Eleanor's room. But she paused at the doorway, her hand on the frame, her back to the room. "Ivan. When we catch him — when we have everything we need — you need to know something."
"What?"
"This isn't just attempted murder. If Eleanor dies — if the poison has done too much damage — it's murder. First-degree. Premeditated. Six years of premeditation." She looked over her shoulder, and her hazel eyes were ancient and tired and full of a sorrow Ivan recognized. The kind of sorrow that came from seeing too much evil in too many human hearts. "Your brother might be a monster."
"I know," Ivan said. "I've known since we were kids. I just didn't know how deep it went."
Linda disappeared into Eleanor's room. The door clicked shut.
The kitchen was silent. The fog pressed against the windows. The chamomile tea had gone stone cold in Ivan's cup, the steam long since vanished into the lamplight.
"We're going to get him," Jennifer said quietly. "Right? We're going to make this right."
Ivan looked at his sister — her painted face, her wet eyes, her clenched fists. She was thirty-seven years old and she'd killed more men than most soldiers killed in a career, but right now she looked like the eighteen-year-old who'd held him at their parents' funeral. The one who'd whispered we're still here, we're still family, we're still us while he sobbed into her shoulder.
"We're going to get him," he said. "But we're going to do it smart. We're going to do it quiet. And when the time comes —"
"We end him," Rickey said. His red eye was wet, but his black eye was still. Still like the surface of a lake at midnight. Still like the moment before a shot. "For Gran. For everything."
"For everything," Ivan echoed.
He walked back to the table and sat down. His hand found the cup of cold tea and he lifted it anyway, drinking the bitter dregs because it gave him something to do that wasn't screaming. The liquid was stale and lukewarm and tasted faintly of lavender — the same lavender Eleanor had grown in her garden for fifty years, the same lavender his mother had pressed into his pillow when he was a child who couldn't sleep, the same lavender Michael had been using to mask the taste of poison.
He set the cup down. His hand was steady. His mind was not.
"Michelle," he said.
"Yeah."
"When you do surveillance — be careful. He's not stupid. He's just cruel. And cruel people see cruelty coming because they expect it from everyone."
"I know." She moved to stand behind him, her hand resting on his shoulder. Her fingers were cold. "I've been invisible my whole life. It's what I do."
"Kimberly."
"Yeah."
"The money trail. Look for any large purchases in 2019 or early 2020. If he bought silverdrop — if he bought it from someone who knew what it was — there'll be a record. Shell companies can hide a lot, but they can't hide everything."
"Already on it." She was pulling out her laptop, her orange eyes reflecting the screen's glow as it booted up. "HSI has access to financial databases Michael doesn't even know exist. If there's a trail, I'll find it."
"And Jennifer."
"I'll talk to Gran in the morning." Jennifer's voice was steadier now, the crack sealed over with purpose. "When she's rested. When the pain medication isn't making her foggy. I'll ask her about the tea — when Michael started making it, if he ever brought her special blends, if she noticed anything different. She trusts me. She'll talk."
Ivan nodded. The plan was forming. A quiet investigation, a silent war, the kind of fight his siblings had been trained for. HSI, SOG, BORTAC, DEA SRT — they'd spent their careers hunting people who thought they were untouchable. Michael was just another target. Just another monster wearing a human face.
But he was also their brother.
"Does it bother you?" Ivan asked. "That it's Michael. That it's our blood."
Kimberly didn't look up from her laptop. "He stopped being our blood when he looked at you at the funeral and told you that you didn't belong. He stopped being our blood when he tried to steal the farm. He stopped being our blood when he poisoned our grandmother for six years." She typed something, her fingers sharp and precise. "Blood doesn't mean anything if the heart is rotten."
"She's right," Michelle said. "Michael chose this. Every day for six years, he chose to put poison in Gran's tea. He chose to watch her get sicker. He chose to play the dutiful grandson while he was killing her. That's not family. That's a predator."
Rickey was still by the window, but he'd turned to face them. His two-toned face was unreadable in the lamplight. "When I was in Delta, we had a saying. 'The enemy isn't always in front of you. Sometimes they're sitting at your table.' I never thought it would be literal."
"None of us did," Jennifer said. "But here we are."
Ivan looked at his hands. The signet ring glinted in the lamplight — silver and a single black stone, worn by Nightsworn for two thousand five hundred years. His mother had worn it. His grandmother had worn it. And now he was wearing it, and somewhere in this house a man who shared his blood was waiting for the chance to finish what he'd started.
"I should have seen it," Ivan said. "I should have known."
"How?" Linda's voice came from the doorway. She'd emerged from Eleanor's room again, her medical bag in one hand and a vial of blood in the other. The blood was dark — almost black in the low light — and it caught the lamp's glow like liquid ruby. "Michael was careful. He chose a poison that mimics natural disease. He dosed it low enough that even a doctor would write it off as age-related decline. You couldn't have known."
"I'm a sniper. I'm supposed to see things other people miss."
"You see threats from a thousand yards. You don't see poison in a teacup." She set the vial down on the table. "No one sees poison in a teacup. That's the point."
Ivan stared at the blood. His grandmother's blood. Full of poison and cancer and the slow death that had been creeping through her veins since 2020. Since Michael had decided that waiting for Eleanor to die naturally wasn't fast enough. Since he'd decided that the family company — the farm, the relics, the legacy — was worth killing for.
"When this is over," Ivan said, "I'm going to ask him why. Before whatever happens happens. I'm going to look him in the eye and ask him why he did it. And I'm going to make him answer."
"He won't have a good reason," Michelle said. "People like Michael never do. It's always the same thing — jealousy, greed, the belief that they deserve something other people have. He looked at Gran and saw an obstacle. He looked at you and saw a threat. He looked at the company and saw something he wanted."
"And he looked at us," Kimberly added, "and saw nothing. Because we weren't in his way. We weren't the oldest. We weren't the ones Gran trusted most. We were just — there. Irrelevant."
"He was wrong about that," Rickey said.
"Yeah." Kimberly's smile was sharp as a blade. "He's about to find out how wrong."
Linda sat down at the table and pulled out her tablet again. "I'm going to cross-reference the silverdrop with known manufacturers. It was banned in '92, but there were stockpiles. Military applications, mostly. Black ops research that got shut down. If I can trace where it came from, we can trace who bought it."
"And then we trace it to Michael," Jennifer said.
"And then we trace it to Michael," Linda agreed. "But we have to be patient. If we rush this, we lose him. If we tip him off, he runs. Or he destroys evidence. Or he does something desperate."
"He's already desperate," Ivan said. "At the hospital — the way he acted. The way he threatened me. He knows Eleanor doesn't trust him. He knows she changed the executorship. He knows he's running out of time."
"Then we need to move fast but quietly." Linda pulled up a new file on her tablet. "I'm going to document everything. Every test result. Every trace of poison. I'm going to build a file so airtight that no lawyer in the world can poke a hole in it. And when it's ready —"
"We go to the FBI," Kimberly said. "Federal charges. Interstate commerce — if the poison crossed state lines, and it probably did. Attempted murder of an elder. Fraud. Embezzlement, if we can tie it to the company. He'll never see daylight again."
"If he's lucky." Michelle's voice was ice.
Ivan stood up. His body felt strange — lighter than it should, like something had been carved out of him and replaced with cold air. "I need to see her."
"She's asleep," Linda said. "The pain medication —"
"I don't need her to be awake. I just need to see her."
Linda looked at him for a long moment. Then she nodded. "Five minutes. Don't wake her. She needs rest."
Ivan walked to Eleanor's door. His hand found the knob — old brass, worn smooth by decades of use — and turned it slowly. The door swung open on silent hinges. Inside, the room was dim, lit only by a single candle on the nightstand. Eleanor lay in the big four-poster bed that had been in the family for generations, her gray hair spread across the pillow like spun silver, her blue eyes closed, her breathing slow and even.
She looked small. She'd always seemed so large — larger than life, larger than the farm, larger than the weight of two thousand five hundred years of Nightsworn history. But now, in the candlelight, she was just an old woman dying of poison her own grandson had given her.
Ivan knelt beside the bed. His knees found the same floorboards he'd knelt on as a child, praying with her before bedtime. The same floorboards he'd knelt on after his parents died, sobbing into her lap while she stroked his hair and told him he was still loved. The same floorboards he'd knelt on last week, when she'd given him his mother's ring and told him to protect the family.
"I'm going to protect you," he whispered. His voice was barely audible, just a breath in the darkness. "I'm going to find the proof. I'm going to make him pay. And I'm going to make you proud."
Eleanor didn't stir. But her hand — the one resting on the blanket — twitched slightly. Just a finger. Just a small movement. Like she'd heard him, somewhere in her medicated sleep, and was trying to answer.
Ivan pressed his forehead to the edge of the mattress and closed his eyes. The tears came then — not the raging sobs of a grief he couldn't control, but the slow, silent tears of a man who'd been holding back a flood for too long. They slid down his painted cheeks and dripped onto the quilt, leaving dark spots on the fabric.
"I love you," he said. "I know I don't say it enough. I know I'm not good at — any of this. But I love you. And I'm not going to let him take you without a fight."
He stayed there for five minutes. Then ten. Then Linda's hand was on his shoulder, gentle but firm, pulling him back to the world outside this room. "She needs rest," Linda murmured. "And you need to prepare for Baltimore. Dawn comes early."
Ivan nodded. He wiped his face with the back of his hand — the paint would be smeared, but he didn't care — and stood up. His knees ached from the floorboards. His chest ached from everything else.
"Take care of her," he said.
"I will. I promise."
He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. In the kitchen, his siblings were still at the table, their faces lit by laptop screens and lamplight and the slow burn of a rage none of them had learned to extinguish. They looked up when he entered.
"She's asleep," he said.
"Good," Kimberly said. "She needs it."
"We all do." Ivan pulled out a chair and sat down. "Dawn comes early. Baltimore doesn't wait. But after Baltimore — after Sarah is safe and Victor Reed is dead — we come back here. And we finish this."
"We finish this," Michelle agreed.
"Together," Jennifer said.
"Always," Rickey added.
Ivan looked at them — his family, his blood, his quintuplets in everything that mattered. Michael had tried to destroy them. Michael had tried to poison their grandmother and steal their legacy and make Ivan feel like he was nothing. But Michael had failed. Because the Nightsworns didn't break. They burned.
And Michael was about to find out just how hot that fire could get.
"Linda," Ivan said. "Keep testing. Keep documenting. Keep building the case."
"I will."
"Kimberly. The money trail."
"On it."
"Michelle. Surveillance."
"Done."
"Jennifer. Talk to Gran when she wakes up. Gently."
"Of course."
"Rickey. Your DEA contacts."
"Already texting them."
The room had gone still.
Not the stillness of sleep or the stillness of waiting. The stillness of something that had been there and now was not. Ivan felt it before he understood it — a shift in the air pressure, a change in the quality of the silence, like a frequency only he could hear had suddenly cut out.
Linda's hand stopped moving over her tablet. Just stopped. Her hazel eyes fixed on the monitor beside Eleanor's bed, and something in her face — something Ivan had seen on battlefields a hundred times — told him everything before she opened her mouth.
"She's gone."
Two words. Simple. Clinical. The way Linda said them, they could have been a weather report. But her voice cracked on "gone" — just slightly, just enough to betray the years of training that told her not to feel it yet.
Ivan didn't move. His knees were still pressed into the floorboards beside Eleanor's bed, the same floorboards that had held him through every grief this family had ever known. His hand was still on the quilt, the fabric rough under his palm, still warm from where her body had been. Had been. Past tense. The word was a bullet he couldn't unfeel.
"No," Kimberly said. She was standing in the doorway, her orange eyes fixed on the bed, her face — that fierce, painted face, Viking on one side and Vlad III on the other — suddenly looked like it was cracking from the inside. "No. Linda. No."
"I'm sorry." Linda's voice was steadier now, but her hands were shaking. Her tablet clattered onto the table. "She just — her heart just — there was no warning. No distress. She simply stopped breathing."
Michelle rose from her chair. Her black eyes were wet, but her jaw was set in that way Ivan recognized — the way that meant she was holding back a scream with nothing but bone and will. She didn't speak. She couldn't. But she crossed the room and knelt beside Ivan, her shoulder pressing against his, her breath coming in short, sharp bursts that she was fighting to control.
Rickey slammed his fist on the table. The laptops jumped. The oil lamp flickered. "Fuck!" The word tore out of him raw and jagged, his blood-red eye blazing, his midnight-black eye swallowing the lamplight. "Fuck fuck fuck." He was on his feet, pacing, his hands in his hair — the cornrows, the shaved sides, the paint that made him look like something from a nightmare — and he was crying without making a sound.
Jennifer didn't move from her chair. Her eyes — yellow, orange, red, black, all four colors swirling in the lamplight — stared at Eleanor's body. Her mouth opened. Closed. Opened again. No sound. Her hands, resting on the table, had gone completely still, the same stillness Ivan had seen in her when she was about to pull a trigger.
"Gran," she whispered finally. Just that. Just the one word. It carried everything.
Ivan reached out and took Eleanor's hand. It was already cooling, the fingers that had held him as a boy, that had stroked his hair when he sobbed over his parents' coffins, that had pressed his mother's ring into his palm just days ago. Cool now. Empty now. He lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her knuckles, and the tears came — those same slow, silent tears from before — sliding down his painted cheeks and dripping onto the bed.
"You made them proud," he whispered. It was what she'd told him, twenty years ago, when he'd knelt at his parents' coffins and sobbed that he wanted to make them proud. She'd held him then. She'd told him he already did. And now she was the one who was gone, and he was the one holding her hand, and there was no one left to tell him it was enough.
"Ivan." Jack King's voice. Quiet. Steady. The voice of a man who'd seen too much death to be shaken by it, but whose blue eyes — African-American, military-short hair, the face of a soldier — were rimmed with red. He was standing by the door now, Stevenson beside him, their bodies filling the frame like sentinels. "Ivan, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"She was the best of us," Stevenson said. His black eyes were wet, his Native American braids hanging loose over his shoulders. "The best of the Nightsworns. The best of anyone."
Melissa was the last to move. She'd been frozen in her chair, her ocean-blue eye and emerald-green eye fixed on Eleanor, her short mohawk catching the lamplight. Now she stood, slowly, and walked to the foot of the bed. She didn't touch Eleanor. She just stood there, her jaw tight, her hands clenched at her sides.
"She knew," Melissa said. "She knew Michael poisoned her. She knew, and she still — " Her voice broke. "She still told us to protect the family. Not revenge. Protection. She was dying, and she was thinking about us."
Kimberly let out a sound that was half-sob, half-growl. "And Michael is still breathing."
"Don't." Ivan's voice was quiet, but it cut through the room like a blade. He didn't look up from Eleanor's hand. "Not yet. Not here. Gran wouldn't want us to — not here."
"Then where?" Kimberly demanded. "When? He killed her, Ivan. He poisoned her, and she's dead, and he's out there somewhere, probably celebrating — "
"I said not yet." Ivan lifted his head. His silver eye and gray eye, the Viking paint and Vlad paint, the face of a man who'd been called a monster and a hero and a reaper — all of it was wet with tears. "I'm going to kill him. You know I am. But not here. Not while she's still warm."
Silence. Kimberly stared at him, her orange eyes blazing, and for a moment Ivan thought she was going to argue. But then her shoulders dropped, and she nodded, and she crossed the room to kneel beside him and Michelle.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I'm sorry, Ivan. I just — "
"I know."
The door to the hallway opened. Maria Smith stepped through, her blue eyes red from crying, her long hair — blue on the left, red on the right — tangled and unbrushed. Behind her came John, his own blue eyes shadowed, his mixed-race face drawn with grief. They'd heard. They must have heard the fist slam, the shout, the silence after.
"Oh, Ivan," Maria breathed. "Oh God. Oh God, no."
She crossed the room without hesitation, without asking permission, and dropped to her knees beside him. Her hand found his shoulder. Her fingers pressed into the muscle, warm and alive, and Ivan felt something crack inside his chest — not the clean break of a bone, but the messy, splintered fracture of a dam giving way.
"She's gone," he said. Saying it out loud made it real. Made it unbearable. "She's gone, Maria. She's gone, and I couldn't — I was right here, and I couldn't — "
"You were here," Maria said. Her voice was fierce, her blue eyes burning into his. "You were holding her hand. You were talking to her. She knew you were here, Ivan. She knew. And she wasn't alone. That's what matters. She wasn't alone."
John knelt beside his wife. His hand found Ivan's other shoulder. "She was surrounded by family," he said. "By love. That's a good death, Ivan. That's the best death anyone can hope for."
"I don't want a good death," Ivan said. "I want her alive."
"I know." John's grip tightened. "I know."
The room filled slowly. Jack and Stevenson moved closer, their boots heavy on the floorboards. Melissa stayed at the foot of the bed, her hands still clenched. Jennifer finally rose from her chair and came to stand behind Ivan, her hand brushing the back of his neck — a touch so light it was almost not there, but Ivan felt it like a brand. Rickey stopped pacing and stood at the window, his back to the room, his shoulders shaking. Linda stayed by the monitors, her face buried in her hands, her gray-striped hair falling forward.
And then the front door opened.
Ivan heard it — the creak of the hinges, the rush of cold air, the sound of footsteps in the hallway. Fast footsteps. Urgent.
Sarah Douglas burst through the bedroom door, her bubblegum-pink eyes wild, her braided hair coming loose, her face — no paint, just Sarah — streaked with tears and dirt and exhaustion. Behind her came Mark, the President of the United States, his blue eyes hollow, his long hair disheveled, his tie undone and hanging loose around his neck.
"I came as soon as I heard," Sarah said. Her voice was raw, scraped out, the voice of someone who'd been screaming or crying or both. "I was in Baltimore — Victor got called away, some emergency in New York — I slipped out — Mark met me at the airfield — " She stopped talking. She was staring at the bed. At Eleanor. At the still, small body of the woman who'd been the backbone of the Nightsworn family for eighty years.
"No," Sarah whispered. "No, no, no — " She stumbled forward, and Ivan caught her — his arms went around her automatically, the way they'd done a thousand times, the way they'd done since they were teenagers learning to be soldiers. She collapsed against him, sobbing, her fingers digging into his back.
"I should have been here," she choked out. "I should have been here, Ivan, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry — "
"You're here now." Ivan's voice was barely a whisper. "That's what matters." He looked up at Mark, who was standing in the doorway, his face a mask of presidential composure that was cracking around the edges. "Both of you. You came."
"Of course we came." Mark's voice was rough. "She was family. She was — " He stopped. Swallowed. "She was the closest thing to a grandmother I ever had."
Michelle stood up. She walked to Mark and put her arms around him, and the President of the United States — the most powerful man in the world — broke down and cried on her shoulder. His body shook. His hands gripped her back. And Michelle, quiet Michelle, the strategist who spoke only when words were necessary, held him without saying a word.
Rickey turned from the window. His face was wrecked, his paint smeared, his eyes red and black and rimmed with grief. "Gran would be pissed," he said, his voice thick. "All of us standing around crying like this. She'd tell us to get our shit together and get back to work."
A wet laugh escaped Kimberly's throat. "She would. She'd say 'Stop sniveling and go kill some Syndicate bastards.'"
"She'd say 'Language, Kimberly Anne Nightsworn,'" Jennifer added, and her voice was almost steady now. Almost.
"And then she'd tell us she loved us," Ivan said. "And that we made her proud."
The room went quiet again. But it was a different quiet now — not the stillness of death, but the silence of shared grief, of family holding family, of the weight of eighty years settling into memory.
Maria pulled back from Ivan's shoulder. Her blue eyes met his silver and gray. "What do you need?" she asked. Simple. Direct. Like she was asking about the weather or the time. "What do you need right now?"
Ivan looked at her. At this woman he'd saved when she was eighteen, who'd grown into a wife and mother and force of nature, who'd told him she saw the light in him and meant it. At John, beside her, his hand still on Ivan's shoulder, his face open and honest and full of a friendship Ivan didn't know how to accept.
"I need to call the Sullivan family," he said. "Amber's parents. They loved Gran. They deserve to know."
"I'll do it," Mark said. He'd pulled away from Michelle, his composure reassembling piece by piece. "I should — as President, as family — I should be the one."
"Thank you."
"And the funeral," Kimberly said. "We need to plan — "
"Not tonight." Linda's voice cut through, steady now, the trauma specialist and doctor reasserting control. "Not tonight, and not at dawn either. You have Baltimore. Sarah is here, which means the operation can move forward without the complication of an extraction. Eleanor would want you to go. She'd want you to finish what you started."
"Linda's right," Sarah said. She wiped her face with the back of her hand, smearing tears and dirt into a single streak. "Victor's in New York. He won't be back until late tomorrow. His warehouse is vulnerable. His men are scattered. This is our window."
"Gran would say the mission comes first," Jennifer said. "She always said that. 'The mission is the family, and the family is the mission.'"
"And the mission right now," Ivan said, his voice hardening, "is to make sure Michael pays for what he did. But first — first we finish Baltimore. First we make sure Victor Reed can't hurt anyone else. Then we come back here, and we bury Gran, and we destroy Michael."
He looked down at Eleanor's body. At her gray hair, her closed eyes, her still hands. She'd been planning since she was seventeen. She'd been protecting the family for sixty-three years. She'd carried the weight of two thousand five hundred years of Nightsworn history, and she'd done it with grace and fire and a love so fierce it could level mountains.
"I'm going to make you proud," Ivan whispered. "I'm going to protect the family. I'm going to finish this. And I'm going to make sure Michael burns for what he did."
He pressed his forehead to her hand one last time. Then he stood up. His knees ached. His chest ached. His face was a mess of Viking paint and Vlad paint and tears. But his hands were steady. His silver eye and gray eye were clear.
"Linda," he said. "Stay with her. Take care of the arrangements. Whatever needs to be done, do it."
"I will."
"Kimberly. The money trail on Michael — I want everything. Every transaction. Every shell company. Every dirty dollar."
"You'll have it."
"Michelle. Surveillance on Michael. I want to know where he is, who he's talking to, what he's planning. Every minute of every day."
"Done."
"Jennifer. Talk to the Sullivan family when they arrive. Gently. They loved Gran too."
"Of course."
"Rickey. Your DEA contacts. I want Michael's supply chain mapped. Every supplier, every buyer, every weak point."
"Already on it."
"Jack. Stevenson. Prep the teams for Baltimore. Dawn is still the deadline. Sarah's intel is our advantage, and we are not going to waste it."
"We'll be ready," Jack said.
"We always are," Stevenson added.
"Melissa." Ivan turned to her. "You're with me on the assault. I need your eyes, your instincts, and your rifle."
Melissa's ocean-blue eye and emerald-green eye met his. "Always," she said. "Always."
"Maria. John." Ivan looked at them, these two people who'd appeared in his life like a miracle he didn't deserve. "You should stay here. The farmhouse is safe. Ian — "
"Ian is with my parents," Maria said. "He's safe. And we're not going anywhere." Her voice was steady, but her hand found John's, their fingers intertwining. "We'll be here when you get back. We'll help with whatever you need."
"You're family now," John said. "That means we stay."
Ivan stared at them for a long moment. Then he nodded. "Thank you."
He turned to Sarah. She was still standing in the circle of his arm, her pink eyes fixed on his face, her body trembling slightly — from grief or exhaustion or adrenaline, he couldn't tell. Maybe all three.
"You should rest," he said. "Before dawn."
"I can't. I won't be able to sleep."
"Then stay with me. Help me plan. Tell me everything you know about Victor's warehouse."
"I can do that."
He looked around the room one last time. His family — his blood, his quintuplets, his brothers and sisters in everything that mattered. His friends — Jack King with his steady blue eyes, Stevenson Wolf with his black-eyed Apache stillness, Melissa Alvarez with her ocean-emerald gaze. His people — Maria and John, who'd chosen him despite everything, and Mark Douglas, President of the United States, who'd flown through the night just to grieve with them.
And Eleanor. Still on the bed. Still small. Still gone. But not gone — not really. She was in the floorboards where Ivan had knelt as a child. She was in the ring on his finger, the silver and black stone that had been his mother's. She was in the paint on his face and the fire in his chest and the promise he'd made twenty years ago and was still trying to keep.
"We're going to win," Ivan said. His voice was quiet, but it carried. "For Gran. For Mom and Dad. For Amber. For everyone the Syndicate has ever hurt. We're going to burn them to the ground, and we're going to do it together."
"Together," Kimberly said.
"Together," Michelle echoed.
"Together," Jennifer whispered.
"Always," Rickey finished.
Ivan walked out of the bedroom. The hallway was dark, the floorboards creaking under his boots, the same floorboards he'd walked a thousand times as a boy and a man and a soldier. Behind him, he heard the others moving — chairs scraping, footsteps following, the low murmur of voices planning and grieving and surviving.
In the kitchen, the laptops were still open. The oil lamp was still burning. The plans for Baltimore were still spread across the table, maps and schematics and target lists that represented the end of Victor Reed and the beginning of something else. Something final.
Ivan pulled out his chair and sat down. His hand went to his thigh — tap, tap, tap — the old ritual, the OCD tic he couldn't quite kill. He didn't try to stop it. Not tonight.
"Alright," he said as the others filed in around him. "Sarah. Tell me everything."
She sat beside him, her pink eyes hard now, her grief pushed down into a place she'd deal with later. Her finger traced a line on the map — the harbor, the warehouse, the guard rotations she'd memorized during her weeks undercover.
The dawn was coming. Baltimore was waiting. And somewhere out there, Michael Nightsworn was breathing, not knowing that his hours were numbered.
Ivan smiled. It wasn't a nice smile.
"Let's get to work."