The mansion had settled into a rhythm.
Not peace—Matthew knew better than to call it that—but something close enough to pass for it. The kind of quiet that existed only because everyone inside it was tired of bleeding.
Three months after the fire.
Three months after Kieran's death.
Three months of rebuilding something that had once been reduced to ash.
Elia had become the axis around which everything rotated.
Her cries dictated the hours. Her laughter softened even the sharpest edges of the house. Matthew had watched hardened men—men who had killed without blinking—freeze in their tracks when she smiled at them.
Vinny said it was because she looked like him.
Matthew thought it was because she reminded them of something they'd lost.
Noah learned the mansion's rhythms faster than anyone expected.
He learned which floorboards creaked and which didn't.
Which doors were always locked.
Which rooms no one entered without permission.
