Phoebe was not in her bedroom, though that was where everyone believed she lay resting. Instead, she stood barefoot in the hallway, her palm pressed flat against the wall as Tom's voice travelled through the half‑closed door.
She had meant only to fetch water. To give the men the privacy they deserved. But the weight in Tom's voice had held her there, rooted, as if the walls themselves remembered what she was only just relearning.
Then she heard the name.
Matvey.
Cold chased down her spine. The syllables carried more than sound — they carried history, fear, survival. The mafia had never been an abstraction in Phoebe's life. It had been footsteps behind her on city streets, the discipline of walking without panic, the habit of checking reflections in shop windows to make sure she wasn't followed.
Now that shadow had stretched far enough to touch Simon.
What shook her most was not the danger itself, but the reason for it — that John, wearing borrowed names and borrowed identities, circled her son because of Tom. Because of love turned poisonous.
Phoebe closed her eyes briefly. For years she had believed silence was protection. She knew better now.
She stepped into the sitting room.
The men looked up as one.
"I heard you," she said quietly, meeting Tom's gaze. "And you don't owe me an apology. Thank you for telling the truth — and for protecting Simon when he couldn't protect himself."
Simon opened his mouth, but Phoebe raised a hand.
"There's more," she said, her voice steady despite the exhaustion beneath it. "The doctors found nothing. The cancer is gone."
Shane was on his feet instantly, his relief breaking loose in a startled laugh as he embraced her. Phoebe accepted it, then turned to Simon.
"I want something back," she said. "Not safety — purpose. I want to work. Real work. In your company."
Simon stared.
"Junior accounts administrator," Phoebe continued. "Quiet. Proper. No one is to know I'm your mother. I've built enough of my life in shadows."
The room held its breath.
Then Shane laughed, bright and unrestrained. "You'll run rings around them, Mum."
Simon's smile returned slowly, genuine this time. "Then we start with shopping," he said. "Clothes that don't give you away. Something practical. Something yours."
Phoebe laughed — soft, unguarded. "Just don't park me next to your penthouse."
The tension loosened, not gone, but eased.
As the evening drifted on, tea replaced adrenaline, and conversation softened into fragments of normality. When the clock slid past midnight, Simon rose and nodded subtly to Tom.
Outside, the street glistened with rain.
"I want to know everything," Simon said once they were alone. "Every way you helped me. Every time you stepped in. No more shadows."
Tom met his gaze. "All of it," he said. "No edits."
They stood there a moment, uncertainty hanging between them — but no retreat.
Inside the flat, a fragile sense of safety held. Outside, the city watched, indifferent. And somewhere beneath the streets and names and borrowed histories, old forces shifted — patient, wounded, and not yet finished.