“All dealt with.

She won’t feel any of it.” Aidan’s voice, unbothered.

“You just get her up onto that deck on her own feet.

Your mother and I will be at the stern to help with the rest.” A pause.

“And make it look right, Flynn.

A woman who slips over a railing in a storm doesn’t look tidy.

Loose shoe, hair a mess — give the investigators an accident to find, not a scene.”

I lay on the freezing boards with my cheek against the wet teak, shaking so hard the railing rattled under my hand, and I recorded them laying out, step by careful step, the blueprint of my own murder — the staging, the timing, the lie they would hand the world when I was gone.