Page 74 of Man of Lies

I let out a breath through my nose, sharp and humorless. “Next time, just shoot me. Fewer variables.”

“What, and deprive the world of that face? Selfish bastard.” Silas’s eyes gleamed with that same old devilish heat that had always gotten a rise out of me.

My gaze dropped to his hand resting slack against the blanket, skin mottled with bruises that hadn’t started healing yet. I didn't reach for it, no matter how much I wanted to. I couldn’t. One more inch and I’d be laying myself bare.

“What’s the damage?” he asked, lids so heavy he could barely keep them open.

Unable to resist, I stretched my pinkie out toward his nearest finger. The touch was so light, he probably couldn’t even feelit. But I did. The warmth, the electrical pulse that couldn’t be quantified, but I recognized it every time he walked into a room.

“Your gunshot is slightly infected, but they’re managing it with some drip antibiotics,” I said slowly, arranging the nurses' reports into something easy to digest. “You broke your clavicle, cracked a few ribs, and your back looks like someone tried to sandpaper you down to the bone. You’ll have scars, and they won’t be pretty, but it…it could have been much worse.” My breath hitched. “You were lucky.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, sliding an amused look toward me. “Feels just like luck.”

I hung my head. My body still ached from the crash—not as bad as his, not even close, but enough to remind me what a goddamn idiot I’d been.

“I shouldn’t’ve ridden like that,” I blurted. “I just… wasn’t thinking straight. Dom was acting like he’s fucking invincible, and once we found Gator, I?—”

I broke off abruptly, my mind snagging on something I hadn’t even begun to process. The blood, the face that had looked so different alive…the watch.

It was still sitting in the locked drawer of my desk at the task force building. I didn’t know what the hell to do with it. Dominic and I hadn’t talked about it, and I hadn’t told anyone else. Not yet.

I cleared my throat and tried to shove the thought aside. “Anyway. You should know… Dom pulled it off. He saved the girls. Got to them before anyone else could. The feds swept the Mississippi side after that, but whoever ran the whole thing? Still a ghost. No charges. No name.”

Silas released a slow breath and settled his head against the pillow. His gaze tracked upward, settling somewhere on the water-stained ceiling tiles like he was trying to read what came next in the shape of the cracks.

“That’s the important part,” he said, almost to himself. “Not the only part that matters. Not with the drugs still moving, and the ones responsible still on the loose. But if the girls got out… and no one innocent died getting them there—” He blinked, eyes still fixed on the ceiling. “Then I can close the page on this one.”

I shut my eyes.

Close the page.

I knew what he meant, and it was more than the case. It was this chapter of his life. The part where he lived nothing but lies…including us.

My throat went tight before I could stop it. I hadn't felt that sick, hollow pinch of panic since I was a kid, watching people walk out and knowing better than to ask them to stay. He hadn’t said the words yet, but I could feel them lining up behind his teeth.

It was good while it lasted.

People said that when they wanted to make a bitter truth go down easily. That it had meant something...but not enough. Yeah, we’d burned hot. Fast. Cut open pieces of each other that we didn’t show to anyone else. I knew that. I knew it in my body, how I still felt him when he wasn’t in the room. We’d said things—realthings—and meant every word.

But maybe it wasn’t about truth.

I didn’t know if truth could carry us that far.

“What…” I had to clear my throat and try again. “What’s next?”

Silas’s gaze stayed fixed on the ceiling. When he finally spoke, it was slower than usual, like every word was being weighed on its way out.

“I’ve got to report to my field office,” he said detachedly. “Debrief, go through the case files, and see how many loose ends we can tie off before every bridge is burned.”

“And then?”

Silas’s mouth tugged at the corner, not a smile—more like a grim acknowledgment of where this was headed.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Not much left on the other end of that flight. My career’s probably done. There’s no coming back from the mess I’ve made.”

I looked down at my hands and flexed my fingers on instinct. My palms were scraped, and the knuckles on my right hand were split open. The skin was puckered and raw. I closed them slowly into fists and rested them on my thighs.

“I can’t leave Devil’s Garden,” I said. “I can’t leave my family.”

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