Chapter 8 #2
"I should have locked him in." His voice shifts—harder now, the grief curdling into something uglier.
"Should have bolted the door. Chained him to the goddamn bed frame.
Shackled him somewhere he couldn't run—somewhere I'd always know exactly where he was.
" His fist presses against the window glass.
"If I'd done that, he'd be upstairs right now.
Asleep. Safe. Hating me for it, maybe, terrified of me, but safe. "
It's a monstrous thing to say. Possessive. Unhinged. The logic of a man who would rather cage something than risk losing it.
And I understand it completely.
Because I cloned his phone. Because I tracked his location.
Because I carried him to my bed and watched him sleep and memorized the rhythm of his breathing the same way Zero memorized it through a door.
We just built different cages—Zero's made of proximity, mine made of surveillance—and neither of them held.
"That's not how it works," I say. Quiet. "You can't keep someone safe by taking away their choices."
"Worked for Dad."
The words hit a nerve he knows exactly how to find.
Because he's not wrong. Richard Graves kept everything he loved under lock and key.
Mom had a driver who reported her movements.
A security detail she didn't choose. A house she couldn't leave without someone knowing where she was going, who she was meeting, what time she'd be back.
He called it protection. She called it love, at least out loud, at least to us.
But I remember the way she stood at the kitchen window some mornings—just standing there, coffee going cold in her hand, staring at the gate at the end of the driveway like she was measuring the distance to a life she'd never reach.
She never left. Never complained. Never pushed back—not where we could see. She accepted the cage because she loved the man who built it, and the man who built it loved her so completely that he couldn't tell the difference between holding someone close and holding them captive.
And then she died anyway.
Cancer doesn't care about security details.
Doesn't care about locked gates or drivers who report to your husband.
She died in a bed Richard had paid a quarter million dollars to fill with the best medical equipment money could buy, surrounded by people he'd hired to keep her alive, and none of it mattered.
All that control. All that protection. And he couldn't protect her from the one thing that actually came for her.
I was nineteen. I watched my father—the most powerful man I'd ever known—stand at the foot of her bed and realize that power means nothing when the enemy lives inside the body you're trying to save.
He changed.
I swore I'd never be him. Never build a cage and call it love.
And here I am. Cloning phones. Tracking locations. Counting the minutes since the person I want most walked out of a house where I had every resource to keep him and couldn't give him one good reason to stay.
"Shut up," I say. "She was controlled. There's a difference. Mom knew the difference. She just never said it out loud."
Zero flinches. Small. Almost invisible. But I see it—the crack, the place where our mother's name still lives like a splinter too deep to extract.
His jaw locks.
"He packed a bag, Atlas." Barely a whisper. "One bag. Like he's been doing his whole life. Ready to disappear. And we were right here—three of us, in this house, and he still felt like he had to run."
The words land in the space between us and sit there like something alive.
Because Zero isn't really talking about locks or chains.
He's talking about the fact that Max lived under our roof and still didn't feel safe enough to stay.
That the boy who sat outside his door for hours listening to him breathe couldn't make him feel protected enough to unpack.
Which isn’t hard to believe considering that boy assaulted him.
And I didn’t do much better.
Neither of us speaks for a long moment. The clock ticks. The silence fills with everything we're not saying—that we both want him, that we both failed him, that the wanting and the failing might be the same thing.
Zero's jaw works. He looks away first.
"What about Richard?" he asks. The deflection is almost graceful. "If he finds out we handed Kline the coastal corridor, he'll—"
"He won't find out. Not yet." I straighten the blueprints on my desk.
A gesture of control in a situation where control is an illusion.
"The concessions run through shell companies.
The revenue share routes through offshore accounts Bane set up last year.
On paper, it looks like a standard distribution partnership.
Richard would need forensic accountants to untangle it. "
"Richard has forensic accountants."
"Richard is semi-retired and playing golf three days a week. And he has Margot. He's not auditing active operations."
"You hope."
"I know my father."
Zero huffs—not a laugh, not quite. An exhale that acknowledges the gamble.
"It's by sheer luck and my willingness to do ugly things at three in the morning that this mess hasn't surfaced already.
Every operator I leaned on, every distributor I cracked—any one of them could have flagged it up. Could have run to Richard."
"They didn't."
"Because they're terrified of me. But terror has a shelf life, Atlas. Eventually someone calculates that Richard's protection is worth more than my threats."
He's right. The clock isn't just ticking on Talbot's forty-eight hours.
It's ticking on the entire architecture of secrecy we've built around Max's kidnapping—the fake texts to Margot, the cover story about Bane's campus commitments, the violent cleanup of every intelligence leak Zero has plugged with his fists.
"We get them back first," I say. "Then we shore up the gaps. One crisis at a time."
Zero nods. Barely. His hand tightens into a fist against the window frame, and I watch his knuckles go white, and I think about Max in the kitchen.
The heat overwhelming him. His legs giving out.
The way he looked up at me from the floor with those dark eyes—terrified, ashamed, searching for something solid to hold onto.
And I was solid. I was the thing he reached for.
I carried him to my bed that night. Watched him sleep in my sheets.
I chose him. Somewhere between the kitchen floor and the sound of his breathing in my sheets, I chose him.
I just didn't have the courage to say it out loud.
Said no instead. Said it gently, measured, like I was being responsible—and watched the light leave his eyes and told myself I was protecting him.
From what? From me? From wanting something that might actually be good?
I will say it. When he's home. When he's safe. When the machine can shut down long enough for the man behind it to speak.
A knock at the door.
We both go still. Zero straightens off the window frame—shoulders squaring, expression flattening, the mask sliding on with practiced speed. I straighten my collar. Smooth my expression.
"Come in."
The door opens. Margot.
She's wearing the cream cardigan she always wears in the evenings—the one Max bought her for Christmas, the one with the loose thread at the cuff she refuses to cut because he told her it gave it character.
Her hair is down. Her face is composed in that careful way women learn when they've spent years managing households where the real business happens behind closed doors.
Mom had that look down too.
But her eyes are wrong. Red-rimmed. The skin beneath them puffy in a way that powder can't fully conceal. She's been crying. Recently. And she's trying very hard to make sure we don't see it.
"I'm sorry to interrupt," she says. Her voice is steady, but practiced. "I just wanted to let you boys know that dinner's ready. I made roasted chicken and it smells amazing." A smile that doesn't reach her eyes. "I'd love it if you both came down."
"We'll be right there," I say. Automatic. The polite response, the expected one.
Zero shifts by the window. I can feel his energy change—the predator's tension replaced by something more complicated.
Margot has that effect on him. She's the closest thing to a mother he's acknowledged since ours died, and he handles that proximity the way he handles everything soft: with distance and denial.
"I'll pass," Zero says. His voice is rough but not unkind. "Not great company tonight."
Margot looks at him. Really looks—the split knuckles, the torn collar, the exhaustion carved into every line of his face. I can see her cataloging it, the social worker's instinct that never fully retired.
She wants to ask. She doesn't.
"Another time, then." She pauses in the doorway. Her hand finds the frame—gripping it, I realize. Holding on. "Have either of you heard from Max?"
The question lands in the room like a grenade with the pin still in.
"He texted this morning," I say. The lie comes out smooth. Practiced. I've told it enough times now that it almost doesn't taste like poison. "Said he's been busy with classwork. Staying with his friend a few more days."
"He texted me too." Margot's chin lifts slightly—the gesture of a woman determined not to crumble.
"But he hasn't called. I've asked him to call three times now and he just..
. texts back." She swallows. "That's not like him.
He always calls. Even when he's busy. Even when it's just thirty seconds to say hi. "
I reach for the bourbon and take a strong swig.
"I'm sure he's fine," I say. The words are ash. "Sometimes kids just need space."
"I know." She nods. Too quickly. "I know that. I do. It's just—" She stops. Her hand tightens on the doorframe. I watch her knuckles go white and think about Zero on the floor outside Max's door at three in the morning, listening to him breathe.