Page 170 of Lady and the Hitman

My father made that almost-sound again. It could have been assent. It could have been breath. It was enough.

I stood.

“Twenty minutes,” I said to no one and to everything. “We have twenty minutes. Then we go.”

And because there was nothing left to do that talking could accomplish, I went to the sink, dampened a washcloth, and cleaned the salt from my mother’s face while the machines kept time for all of us.

34

One Week Later

The surgery had gone better than anyone dared to hope.

Over the past week, we’d lived inside the white walls of the Cleveland Clinic, counting breaths and watching monitors like they were oracles. My father had been prepped at dawn and wheeled into an OR with more screens than a newsroom. We’d waited in a family lounge with gray walls and weak coffee while a team of strangers held his heart in their hands.

But they’d saved him.

They’d threaded a catheter through his femoral artery, mapped the damage, deployed a stent, and reshaped what needed to be reshaped. His surgeon said it was textbook. Miraculous. My mother wept like someone had handed her a future she wasn’t sure she deserved. I wept, too, in the hallway, when no one was looking.

He was awake by nightfall. Weak, groggy, but alive.

Every day since, he’d gotten a little stronger. The swelling had gone down. The color had returned to his face. He’d cracked a joke about the pudding. Teased my mom about hovering. Asked me if I could sneak in a beer. He was going to be okay.

But even with all the relief—and God, there was so much relief—it wasn’t the only thing I’d been thinking about.

Because Ronan had disappeared.

After the transfer, he’d stayed just long enough to make sure we were settled at the hotel, briefed by the hospital, and escorted to the surgical wing. Then he’d left. No fanfare. No goodbyes. Just a quiet message relayed by a hotel staff member the next morning:He flew back to Charleston. Said to tell you everything’s handled.

I’d checked my phone obsessively, hoping for a text. Nothing.

I’d told myself I was grateful. He’d done more than anyone ever had. He didn’t owe me anything. But still, his absence carved a hollow space into every moment. A space Trevor tried to fill.

He’d shown up in Cleveland two days after the surgery. Said he couldn’t stand not being there. He’d brought books, snacks, and a portable Bluetooth speaker he used to play soft jazz in the room while my dad dozed. He’d made calls from the hallway, fielded interviews, and worked on his piece.

He’d done everything right.

He’d been gentle with my mom. Kind to the nurses. Thoughtful in a way that would have meant the world to me a few years ago.

But it wasn’t what I needed now.

Because the truth was, Trevor saw problems as things to dissect. Ronan saw them as things to eliminate. Trevorwould write a beautiful article about injustice and send it into the world like a prayer. Ronan would look you in the eye, nod once, and do what needed to be done before the ink was dry on the petition.

I thought about the flash drive he’d given me in Charleston.

At the time, I’d recoiled. I’d told myself it was too much. I'd barely opened it before the fear kicked in—fear of what it meant about him, about me, about what I was getting pulled into.

But now, with distance, I saw it differently.

He hadn’t given me the flash drive to scare me.

He’d given it to tell me the truth.

And at the time, I couldn’t handle it.

I remembered how I’d sat there in my townhouse, knees drawn up, staring at the videos like they were some kind of sick hallucination. I’d watched him kill. Swift, cold, clinical. I’d watched him whisper to dying men, clean up blood, disappear into shadows like it was second nature.

Because it was.