Nico spoke first. “Two minutes.”
Frank looked at Leah.
She nodded.
He walked out with Owen, though not far.
Nico remained near the door at first, as if unsure whether crossing the room would be welcome. He had changed clothes since the shooting, but Leah still saw the blood on him when she looked.
“Well,” she said, voice rough, “this is a terrible review of your employee health plan.”
A stunned laugh escaped him before he could stop it.
That surprised both of them.
“I owe you a debt I can’t pay,” he said.
Leah held his gaze. “Then don’t.”
His brow tightened. “What?”
“Don’t pay it back the way men like you pay things back.”
Understanding flickered across his face, followed by something darker.
She forced herself to keep speaking despite the pain. “If the answer to what happened is a hundred bodies in ditches, then all I did was change whose funeral they’d be attending.”
He said nothing.
“You want to do something for me?” Leah asked. “Then let this stop with the people who chose it. Not their drivers. Not their cousins. Not some bartender who heard the wrong conversation.”
His jaw worked once. Twice.
“You think that’s how this works?”
“I think that’s how it has to work if Sophie is ever going to sleep again.”
That landed.
For the first time since entering the room, he looked not like a mob boss deciding strategy, but like a father being told the cost of his own reflection.
“I can’t promise mercy,” he said at last.
“I didn’t ask for mercy.”
