Page 32 of The Thief
"Sounds familiar," Freddie murmurs.
I shoot him a look. He's barely touched his food and keeps checking his phone—probably thinking about his dead friend, about the war that's coming.
"Tell me about Trace Harrington," I say.
The temperature in the room drops ten degrees. Henry's face hardens, and Marcus sets down his fork with deliberate care.
"What do you want to know?" Henry asks.
"Why he's killing your people. What does he want?"
"He wants to destroy everything we've built. He thinks he can take over our territory, our business, our lives."
"And Ava? Where did she fit into all this?"
Freddie goes very still beside me. Dangerous territory, I realize. But I need to understand what I'm walking into.
"Ava was a mistake," Marcus says coldly. "A liability that should have been dealt with years ago."
"Marcus," Henry warns.
"She was playing both sides, feeding information to Harrington while pretending to be part of our world. Got people killed with her lies."
I glance at Freddie. His face is carved from stone, but I can see the pain underneath. Whatever Ava was to him, he loved her. And Marcus just called her a mistake.
"She's dead now," Henry says quietly. "No point dwelling on past mistakes."
But Freddie is dwelling. I can see it in the set of his shoulders, the way his hands have gone still on the table. He's thinking about a woman who lied to him, who got his friends killed, who died before he could get answers.
We're all haunted by ghosts, aren't we? All carrying around people who are gone but won't stay buried.
“Why me? Why is he coming after me? How does he even know about me?”
I watch as both Henry’s and Freddie’s eyes darken. “That’s something we’re looking into. No one should have known about you,” Henry says, his voice tight.
My stomach rolls as I realize just how much danger I’m in.
"I'm tired," I say, pushing back from the table. "It's been a long morning."
"Of course," Henry says. "Rest for today. This evening, we’ll have dinner, just the two of us, and tomorrow we'll start properly introducing you to the family."
More family. More strangers who'll look at me and see Killian instead of whoever I'm supposed to be.
I escape upstairs, Freddie following. He stops at my door; his hands shoved deep in his pockets.
"You did well down there," he says.
"I felt like I was performing in a play I've never read."
"That's exactly what it was."
We stand there for a moment, not speaking. The hallway is quiet, heavy with the weight of old secrets and older money.
"Freddie?"
"Yeah?"
"This Ava woman… Were you in love with her?"
