Chapter 20
I stood at the window of my office at Spade Tower, watching the afternoon light shift across Cincinnati's skyline.
The board meeting had ended hours ago. The Pentagon briefing at four o'clock had gone as well as could be expected given the circumstances.
Reid's team was running surveillance on Shaw's known associates while Xavier traced the Banshee's digital footprint across three continents.
Everything was proceeding according to plan, every piece moving into position for our strike on Macau.
And yet I couldn't stop thinking about the look on Maxime's face when I'd sent him home.
I kept seeing the confusion in his eyes when I'd ordered him to leave, the raw vulnerability in his voice when he'd asked if he'd done something wrong.
After all this time, the man still didn't understand that his value to me extended beyond his utility.
I'd sent people to deliver all of it. The professionals I'd chosen would execute my instructions flawlessly, present each gift with appropriate gravity, and report back that everything had gone according to plan.
But that wasn't what I wanted.
I wanted to see his face when he opened the door. I wanted to watch the confusion give way to something softer, something he'd spent decades training himself to hide. I wanted to be there, not receive a secondhand account filtered through professional detachment.
My phone buzzed. Reid, requesting authorization for additional surveillance assets. I approved the request without reading the details, my mind elsewhere.
The gifts had been easy. Expensive, thoughtful, perfectly curated to demonstrate that I saw him, truly saw him, in ways he'd never expected. But something was missing, something that couldn't be purchased from boutiques or sourced through dealers.
I thought about Maxime's face when I'd examined his injuries, the bruises he'd accepted from Xander without fighting back, the twenty-three years he'd spent visiting Imogen's grave while carrying a guilt he'd never asked me to absolve.
What did you give a man who'd spent his entire adult life in service? What gesture could possibly communicate that I wanted him, not his competence, not his loyalty, not his perfectly orchestrated support, but him?
The answer came to me as I stared at the Cincinnati skyline, watching the late afternoon sun paint the buildings gold.
I stopped pacing, grabbed my cane and headed for the elevator.
The Burger King on Vine Street was gone, replaced by a craft cocktail bar with exposed brick and Edison bulbs. Of course it was. Nothing from those early days had survived except Maxime and me.
I had Williams drive me to the nearest location, a franchise near the university that catered to students and late-night stragglers. The parking lot was half-empty, the golden arches of the McDonald's next door casting competitive shadows across the pavement.
"Wait here," I told Williams. "This won't take long."
He didn't question the order, though I caught the slight widening of his eyes as I stepped out of the Escalade with my cane. Algerone Caisse-Etremont did not visit fast food restaurants. Algerone Caisse-Etremont had people for that.
But Jackson Wheeler had once counted pennies for a value meal, and tonight I needed to remember what that felt like.
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead as I pushed through the glass doors.
A handful of college students occupied the booths, laptops open, textbooks scattered across tables sticky with spilled soda.
The cashier, a young woman with bright purple hair and a nose ring, looked up from her phone with an expression of profound disinterest.
Then she registered my suit, my cane, and the watch on my wrist that cost more than her tuition.
Her eyes went wide.
"Two Whoppers with cheese," I said evenly. "No mayo on one. Two orders of fries."
She stared at me for a long moment, apparently trying to reconcile my appearance with my order. I waited, offering no explanation.
"For here or to go?" she finally managed.
"To go."
She entered the order mechanically, still sneaking glances at me like I might be an elaborate hallucination. When the total appeared on the screen, I handed her a hundred-dollar bill.
She stared at it. "I need to get my manager for this."
"Of course."
A harried woman in a headset emerged from the back, verified the bill with a counterfeit pen, and counted out my change. I pushed the bills back across the counter.
"For you and your staff."
The manager's eyebrows shot up. "Sir, we can't accept tips."
"Then put it in whatever jar you keep for employee appreciation. I don't need it back."
I walked away before she could argue further. Let them wonder. Let them construct whatever narrative made sense of a man in a three-thousand-dollar suit ordering fast food on a Tuesday evening.
The familiar smell of grease and salt filled my nostrils, transporting me back thirty years to that first apartment, that first taste of freedom, that first tentative hope that I might become someone worth knowing.
"Order for..." The worker at the pickup window squinted at the receipt. "Uh, hundred-dollar-guy?"
I took the paper bag, feeling the warmth through the wrapper. Then I paused.
"Do you have crowns?"
The worker blinked. "What?"
"Paper crowns. The ones you give to children."
He exchanged a glance with the purple-haired cashier, who shrugged helplessly. He ducked beneath the counter, rummaging through supplies, and emerged with a slightly bent crown in red and gold cardboard.
"This okay?"
I took it from his hand, examining the cheap promotional item like it was a priceless artifact. The cardboard was flimsy, the colors garish, the whole thing designed to be discarded after a single use.
Shane had torn one just like it from my head when I was nine years old. He had knocked me to the ground and made me watch while he threw the pieces in the trash. He had split my lip for "wasting money on garbage."
"Perfect," I said, and tucked the crown into my coat pocket.
The drive to Maxime's Clifton estate took twenty minutes through evening traffic.
I sat in the back of the Escalade with the paper bag beside me, the crown pressing against my chest through my coat pocket. Williams navigated without comment, though I caught him checking the rearview mirror more often than strictly necessary.
I thought about what I was about to do.
This wasn't a business visit. This wasn't a strategic move.
This was something else entirely, something I hadn't allowed myself in decades.
Vulnerability. The deliberate choice to be seen without armor, to offer something that couldn't be purchased or delegated, to show Maxime the boy I'd buried beneath thirty years of ruthless reinvention.
What if he didn't understand? What if the gesture fell flat, rendered ridiculous by the gulf between who I was now and who I'd been then? What if he looked at the paper bag and the crumpled crown and saw only the absurdity, not the meaning beneath?
But then I remembered his confession in my office, the night he'd finally told me the truth about why he knelt. Because I want to. Because I crave it. Because serving you is the only thing that makes me feel whole.
Maxime understood devotion that defied logic. He understood needs that couldn't be explained to people who'd never felt them. He would understand this.
The Escalade turned onto his street, and my chest tightened.
His mansion rose before us, all Corinthian columns and classical pretension, exactly the kind of home I'd insisted he purchase because a man in his position needed appropriate surroundings. I'd never actually been inside.
Williams pulled into the circular driveway and stopped. The evening light had faded to gold, casting long shadows across the manicured lawn.
"That will be all for tonight," I said, gathering the paper bag and my cane. "I won't need you again."
Williams nodded, professional as always, though I caught the slight lift of his eyebrows. I'd never dismissed my driver at a personal residence, and I'd never stayed anywhere without an exit strategy in place.
But tonight was different.
I walked to the front door, each tap of my cane against the cobblestones marking the rhythm of my increasingly rapid pulse. The crown's cardboard edge pressed against my chest through my coat, a reminder of everything I was about to risk.
I rang the doorbell.
For a long moment, nothing happened. I had a sudden, irrational fear that he wasn't home, that he'd gone somewhere despite my orders, that all of this had been for nothing.
Then the door opened.
Maxime stood in the cashmere robe I'd sent him, the black fabric luxuriously soft against his pale skin. His hair was disheveled, his eyes slightly unfocused with recent sleep. The bruising on his face had darkened since I'd sent him home, purple spreading across his cheekbone like spilled ink.
He stared at me with an expression I couldn't immediately categorize.
"I brought dinner," I said, raising the paper bag slightly.
His gaze dropped to the bag. His nostrils flared as he caught the unmistakable scent of fast food, greasy and pungent and completely incongruous with every element of our carefully constructed lives.
"Please tell me that's not..." He trailed off, apparently unable to complete the sentence.
"Whopper with cheese, no mayo. Fries. Still hot." I delivered this deadpan, though something unfamiliar was building in my chest.
I reached into my coat pocket and produced the paper crown, holding it up like a sacred artifact. The red and gold cardboard looked even more ridiculous in the elegant light of his doorway, a garish intrusion of childhood into a space designed for adults who'd forgotten how to play.
"And this," I added.
Maxime stared at the crown. "You didn't."
"I did." My mouth twitched, threatening to curve into something that might have been a smile. "And you're going to eat every bite while we watch a boy ride a flying dog."