Chapter 8 #3
Everyone in this house is holding on to something.
"He's a good kid." Her voice softens. Drops into something private—a register I don't think she uses with many people. "I don't think you boys know that. Not really. Not the way I mean it."
"Margot—"
"He doesn't know what it's like to have people who care about him.
" She says it plainly. Not accusing. Just stating a fact she needs us to hear.
"Truly care. Not out of obligation. Not because they're paid to.
He doesn't know what that looks like. He's never had siblings.
Never had—" She gestures vaguely at the office, at us.
"This. Any of this. People who check on him. People who notice when he's gone."
The irony is so sharp it draws blood. I've noticed. I've noticed every second. I've been counting the minutes since he disappeared like a man counting down to his own execution.
"When he comes home," Margot continues, "I'm asking you both to make an effort.
A real one. Not the polite distance. Not the surface-level courtesy.
Really try to connect with him." Her eyes move to Zero.
Then back to me. "He won't make it easy.
He'll deflect. He'll say he's fine. He'll make himself small and quiet and try to disappear into the wallpaper because that's what kept him safe for all those years.
" Her voice cracks on safe. Seals over. "But he needs people who don't let him disappear.
Who see him even when he's trying not to be seen. "
My throat tightens. I think about the kitchen—Max on the floor, the heat overwhelming him, his eyes wild with panic. Breathe with me. Match my rhythm. The way he looked at me like I was the only solid thing in a dissolving world. The way his hand found my wrist and held on.
The way I said no when he begged me.
"We will," I say. And I mean it with every cell in my body, and the guilt of what I'm withholding from this woman—her son in a concrete cell, gagged and beaten, his body used as a demonstration for a buyer—is so enormous it fills the room like a sound I'm the only one who can hear.
"Where's Bane?" Margot asks. Casual. An afterthought. A mother counting heads.
"Campus," I say. "He's got a financial law exam tomorrow. Decided to stay in the library and study through the night. You know how he gets about exams."
She nods. Believes it. Why wouldn't she? Bane is the reliable one.
"Tell him to eat something," she says. "He forgets."
"I will."
She lingers. Just for a moment. Her eyes sweep the office—the blueprints I should have hidden, the phones in a row, the shattered glass against the far wall. I see her clock the broken glass. See her decide not to ask.
"See you at dinner, then." Softer now. The voice of a mother who knows she's missing something and has chosen, for tonight, to trust her sons with whatever it is. "Don't stay up too late, Zero."
The door closes behind her.
The silence that follows is a different texture than before. Heavier. Stained with something neither of us wants to examine—the particular shame of lying to a good woman about her missing son.
Zero breaks it first.
"Fuck." His voice is barely audible. "She’s totally catching on."
"I know."
"And we're sending her text messages from a burner."
"I know, Zero."
He looks at me. The rage from earlier is gone—not extinguished, just banked. Buried under something quieter. Something that looks, if I'm being honest, like the thing I see in my own reflection when I let the machine slip.
"We get them back," he says. "Tomorrow."
"Tomorrow."
He moves toward the door. Stops. Turns back.
"You going down there?" he asks. Meaning dinner. Meaning Margot. Meaning sitting across from a woman whose son is in a concrete cell and eating roasted chicken like the world isn't ending.
"Someone has to."
He studies me for a second. Something close to respect—or maybe just recognition of a kind of endurance he doesn't share.
"Better you than me." His jaw works. "I wasn't lying when I said I'd lose it. Five more minutes of her asking about Max and I'd have stormed out."
"Go hit the bag," I say. "Or don't. Just—be ready tomorrow. I need you sharp."
"I'm always sharp."
"You're running on no sleep, split knuckles, and whatever you did to Caruso's face. That's not sharp. That's a blade with no handle."
He leaves. The door clicks shut.
I stand in the empty office. The blueprints are scattered. The broken glass glitters against the baseboard. The bourbon I poured sits half empty, catching the lamplight, amber and still.
I pick up my phone. Open the text chain with Margot—the one running through the burner, the one where every message is a carefully constructed lie in Max's voice.
Her last message is from two hours ago: Goodnight sweetheart. I love you. Please call me tomorrow. Just want to hear your voice.
I stare at it until the screen dims.
Then I set the phone down. Walk to the window. Press my forehead against the cold glass the way I've seen Max press his forehead against walls when the world gets too heavy to hold upright.
Somewhere in this city—twenty minutes by car, an infinity by every measure that matters—Max is in a cell. Bane is beside him. And the only thing standing between them and the rest of their lives is a phone call I'll make in the morning to a man I intend to destroy.
I'll make the call. Sign the papers. Shake the hand.
Smile.
And then I'll spend every day after that building the machine that takes Talbot Kline apart.
Not for the empire. Not for the corridors or the ports or the revenue.
For Max. For the one who somehow captured my entire fucking heart.
I won't say no again.
Now let me bring you home.