Chapter Thirteen
Matt didn’t debate the method.
The yacht club was too fluid. Too many variables. Groups formed and dissolved without warning, attention shifting on a whim. Distance would introduce uncertainty where none was needed.
This needed to be close. Quiet. Contained. Final.
He laid the pistol out on the bed and studied it like an old tool he trusted more than most people. The black steel caught a sliver of lamplight—no fingerprints, no shine, no noise. He checked it once, then again. Suppressor seated cleanly. No rattle. No drag.
He practiced how he would pull it from his belt. Every movement deliberate. The rifle was in trunk—not his first option tonight, but Matt never left options behind. Contingency was the discipline that kept him alive.
Prepared wasn’t a mindset. It was a condition.
He checked himself in the hotel mirror. Check the map of the yacht club once more, not that he needed too. Matt was not leaving any detail to circumstance.
He checked out of the hotel and packed his bags in the BMW. The world felt suspended in that in-between time when daylight fades, but full darkness hasn’t taken hold. The smell of the ocean filled the air and there was a quietness to the evening.
He slid behind the wheel, the leather cold beneath his hands, and started the engine. It came to life with the soft confidence of something built for precision.
The short drive toward the club was unremarkable. The road curved gently along the edge of the water. Headlights washed across trees and guardrails, silvering the outlines of everything they touched. The sound of the tires on asphalt was steady, rhythmic.
He kept his speed low. No need to draw attention.
That was when his mother surfaced—her voice, her timing, her calm insistence.
“Take care of your brother.”
The words came as they always did, soft but immovable. Laura Symbiac had been small by the end. Thinner. The illness had carved her into something fragile but never weak. She’d lain propped against her pillows, the afternoon light stretching across her bed like something holy. Her eyes had stayed sharp. Her hands—still warm when they closed around his.
“Ted needs you steady,” she’d said. “Not strong. Steady.”
Matt had nodded because speaking would’ve broken something he wasn’t ready to lose.
After she passed, the house felt quieter but not broken. The grief had structure. It had routine. Dan handled it with the same quiet strength he brought to everything—no theatrics, no indulgence, just presence.
The funeral had been calm. Almost peaceful. People spoke in low tones, smiled through tears, and told stories about her warmth. Laura’s life had been a long goodbye, and the family had learned how to exist inside that slow parting.
Dan had stood beside Matt that day, hand resting briefly on his shoulder—a gesture that said everything. That was before Dan’s own death. Sudden. Unannounced. The kind of loss that tore sound out of a room and left only stillness behind.
Matt’s grip tightened on the steering wheel, leather creaking softly under his fingers. He held it a moment. Then released.
Ahead, the road opened into the curved entrance of the yacht club. Warm light spilled from the windows and reflected off polished cars in the valet circle. The hum of conversation drifted through the night, mixed with the faint clinking of glass and the low thrum of jazz filtering from the terrace speakers.
Money and assumption wrapped together behind gates and good manners.
He parked near the edge of the lot, away from the entrance lights. The air smelled faintly of fuel and perfume. He killed the engine but let the battery run a moment, checking his watch, his pulse, the quiet rhythm of his breath.
Still early.
This wasn’t anger.
It wasn’t revenge.
It was completion.
He stepped out of the car and closed the door gently. The sound barely rose above the soft lap of water against the dock. He adjusted his jacket, smoothed the line of his sleeves, and moved toward the entrance with the measured pace of a man who’d walked the path before.
Voices drifted from the terrace—low laughter, a burst of applause from somewhere deeper inside the club. The air held the faint scent of grilled fish and cigar smoke. The night was clear, moonlight stretching across the water in fractured lines. Every sound was magnified in the quiet: the metallic click of a boat’s rigging, the soft whisper of wind against glass.
Matt slowed his breathing.
In, out.
Measured. Predictable.
He could feel the shift inside—the transition from planning to execution. The place where thought stopped and instinct began.
He passed by the same attendant from the night before with just a nod. The only person who noticed him and he needed it to stay that way.
When the moment came—when the man slipped away from the crowd, into a corridor or a quiet space where the noise didn’t travel and witnesses didn’t linger—Matt Symbiac would ready.
Not strong. Steady.