Chapter 27

Dominic

Mercy clears her on the second day of January, and I find out the way I find out everything about Neve lately: secondhand.

“She’s going back to work tomorrow,” Lena tells me, slapping a plate of eggs in front of me at breakfast. “Light duty. My kitchen. Mercy’s orders.” She leans down. “And if anybody so much as looks at that girl wrong, Dominic Kane, it’ll be your head I come for. Not theirs.”

“Noted.”

“Good.”

She stalks off. I look down at my eggs and find I’m not hungry.

I’ve had nine days to think about what to say to her. I’ve written it out in my head a dozen different ways, lying awake at three in the morning, and every version sounds worse than the last. In the end, I do what my father always did when he didn’t know what to say. I send for her, and I wing it.

She knocks, the way she always does. Two soft raps. She waits for her name.

“Come in.”

She looks better. That’s the first thing I notice, and I hate h