Page 89 of Silent Night, Savage Heart

"Your brother is going to help me start the fires. Then he's going to evacuate like a concerned guest, establish his alibi, and continue being a valuable member of this family."

"And if I refuse?" Luca chimes in.

"Then you burn with the rest of them." Silas checks his phone again. "Eight minutes. Decide, Blake."

He's offering me exactly what he thinks every Delano wants: belonging, acceptance, a place in the empire we've built on suffering. But he's wrong about what I want, and he has been wrong from the beginning.

"No," I say simply.

"No?"

"I'm not helping you kill anyone, and I'm done pretending that family means more than being a decent human being.”

"I was afraid you'd say that." Silas nods to Luca. "Lock him in the storage room. He can burn with his principles."

Luca doesn't move. "Silas, I can’t. This is Blake. My brother. A Delano.”

"He's a traitor who's chosen strangers over blood. He's made his choice. Now make yours."

My brother looks at me, and I see the war happening behind his eyes. Loyalty to Silas, who's been his mentor. Fear of consequences. And underneath it all, the memory of who we used to be before the family destroyed everything good about us.

"I'm sorry," Luca says quietly. Then he pulls a gun, my Glock, the one Silas made me surrender, and points it at me. "Storage room. Now."

The weight of my disappointment with his decision crushes me.

"Luca.”

"Don't make this harder than it is. Please."

I could fight and probably disarm Luca before he gets a shot off, but that starts a confrontation I'm not sure I can win with Silas in the room. And it wastes time the people downstairs need.

I let Luca march me to the storage room at the end of the hall. It's windowless, reinforced, the kind of space designed to contain valuables during estate events.

It’s the perfect prison.

The perfect tomb.

"I really am sorry," Luca says as he pushes me inside.

I try one last bit of reasoning with a kid I taught how to throw a football and roll his first condom on his dick the right way.

“Listen to me. Silas will never admit it because he’s a coward, but he killed our father, and he's going to kill innocent people tonight. You're helping him because you're too scared to stand up to him." I meet his eyes. “I get it, Luca, but that makes you complicit. Imagine living the rest of your life with the weight of all those bodies on your soul.”

His eyes shoot to the floor.

“Your sister is in here, too, Luca. Can you live with yourself if Talia dies too?”

Luca's hand shakes, and I swear he’s fighting back tears. "I don't have a choice."

"We always have a choice. I made mine. Now make yours."

For a moment, I think my little brother might find the resolve to stop this and choose being a decent human over being a good Delano.

Then Silas appears in the doorway. "Enough conversation. Lock it."

Luca closes the door. The lock engages with mechanical finality, and I'm alone in the dark, listening to footsteps fade, knowing that in less than seven minutes, this building starts burning with me trapped inside.

I reach for my phone only to realize I don't have it. Silas took it. I check my pockets and find nothing useful. No tools. No weapons. Just me and a locked door and rapidly diminishing options. How I wish I had let Talia commission one of those super spy pieces of jewelry for me.