Chapter 13 #2
I stay until visiting hours end. When the nurse comes in to tell me it's time, I squeeze Wren's hand and tell her I'll be here first thing tomorrow. Before discharge. Before paperwork. Before she has to walk into a new life alone.
"You won't be alone," I say from the doorway.
She nods. Mouthing thank you as I wave.
I call Bane from the elevator. He picks up on the first ring.
∞∞∞
The estate is warm when Bane and I walk in. Margot is in the kitchen—not cooking, for once. She's at the island with a glass of wine, flipping through a gardening catalog, her reading glasses perched on her nose. Richard is beside her on the phone, ordering pizza.
"No anchovies," Margot says without looking up. "Richard, I'm serious. Last time—"
"One anchovy pizza. For the whole table." Richard winks at her. Into the phone: "Three large. One pepperoni, one margherita, one with everything. No anchovies."
He hangs up. Margot raises an eyebrow.
"I told her she's not allowed to cook tonight," Richard says, pulling his stool closer to hers. "She made cinnamon rolls yesterday morning, had stew going by noon, and I found her at six AM today planning a three-course dinner. The woman hasn't sat down in two days."
"It's called caring, Richard."
"It's called wearing yourself out." He takes her hand. Lifts it. Presses his lips against her knuckles—gentle, unhurried. "You need a night off. Doctor's orders."
"You're not a doctor."
"I'm the man who married the most stubborn woman on the eastern seaboard. Close enough."
Margot's face softens. She leans into his shoulder. He keeps her hand, thumb moving across her knuckles, and for a second the kitchen holds something private and real—two people who chose each other and keep choosing, even when the house is full and the world is complicated and all four of their sons are in a world of complicated drama they couldn’t even imagine.
I watch from the doorway and feel something twist in my chest. Envy, maybe. Or hope.
Everyone is present at the dinner table tonight.
Richard at the head of the table. Margot on his left, me beside her, Bane on my other side. Atlas to Richard's right. And Zero—directly across from me, those dark eyes finding mine the second I sit down.
To an outsider, it looks like a family dinner. Five people and pizza boxes and paper napkins because Margot refused to dirty the china for delivery.
To me, it looks like a territorial formation.
Bane on my left, close enough that I can smell his amber and sandalwood.
Zero across from me, his gunpowder and coffee drifting over the open pizza boxes.
Atlas at the corner of my peripheral vision, his cedar and leather a constant low hum underneath everything.
Three scents braiding in my nervous system. And I feel it. An acute awareness. My body tracking all three without my permission.
"How was the hospital?" Margot asks, sliding the margherita box toward me. She knows I went to visit a friend—the edited version, a girl from class who had an accident. "Is your friend doing better?"
"She's good. Getting discharged tomorrow."
"That's wonderful. You should bring her by sometime. I'd love to meet her."
"Maybe." I reach for a slice. My hand brushes Bane's reaching for the same box. A jolt of warmth that I cover by pulling two slices onto my plate.
Across the table, Zero is looking at me.
Not a glance or a scan. He's looking at me the way he looked at me in the hotel room—steady, unblinking, his dark eyes fixed on mine with an intensity that makes the air between us feel solid.
His wine glass is in his hand. His body is perfectly still.
He's not touching me. He promised he wouldn't, and apparently Zero keeps his promises the way he keeps everything—violently, absolutely.
But he doesn't need to touch me. His eyes are doing the work. They drop to my mouth. Linger. Move back up. Hold. My hand pauses halfway to my mouth, pizza forgotten, and my skin prickles under his gaze like he's running a fingertip across it from six feet away.
He's keeping his word. And somehow that's worse.
Beside me, Bane's jaw tightens. There and gone. But I catch it—he's clocked Zero's stare. Read the weight of it. His hand shifts on the table, moving a fraction closer to mine, a territorial counter-move so subtle it could be reaching for his napkin.
He knows.
"Max." Richard sets down his wine glass. "How are classes this semester? Anything interesting? What was it that you’re taking again, uh– Creative Writing?"
I clear my throat and search for a quick lie. "Creative writing's been good. Working on a longer piece."
"A novel?"
"Maybe. I'm not sure yet."
"Stick with it. The discipline of finishing something is worth more than the thing itself." He reaches for another slice. "And the trouble from the other night? Margot said there was trouble with some drunks? Any follow-up?"
"No. It was a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing."
"These things usually are. Still—" He glances at Atlas. "Might be worth having someone keep an eye on the campus area for a few weeks. Discreetly."
Atlas nods. "Already handled."
Of course he has.
"On a happier note," Margot says, reaching for Richard's hand across the table. Her eyes are bright. "We booked the trip."
The table shifts. Subtle—a collective intake of breath, a recalibration.
"The family vacation," she clarifies, as if anyone forgot.
As if the dinner from Hell—Zero's sneer about playing happy family, the tension thick enough to chew, Margot's forced brightness—wasn't seared into everyone's memory.
"We found a house on the coast. Two weeks.
It's gorgeous—right on the water, enough bedrooms for everyone. "
She looks around the table. Expectant. Hopeful.
"I know you boys have work obligations," Richard says, cutting in with the pragmatism Margot doesn't want to deliver herself. "You can't all be there the full two weeks. But a weekend. A few days. Whenever works." He lifts his glass. "Family is worth the effort."
The brothers exchange glances. A triangle of loaded eye contact that lasts maybe two seconds but carries a full conversation.
"Sounds great, Margot," Bane says. Warm. Easy. "I'll make it work."
"Looking forward to it," Atlas adds. Smooth. Genuine enough to pass.
Zero says nothing. Picks up his glass. Drinks.
I focus very hard on my plate.
Two weeks. A beach house. Three alphas and an omega under one roof without the buffer of Richard's study and Margot's kitchen and separate floors and locked doors.
The irony is so thick I could choke on it.
The family bonding trip Margot proposed when I was just the uncomfortable stepbrother now landing in a room where three of those brothers have touched me in ways stepbrothers definitively should not.
Zero's eyes haven't left me. His gaze drops to my mouth again—deliberate, unhurried—and his lips twitch around his wine glass. The restraint is its own kind of aggression. He's not touching me.
He's making sure I know he's still choosing not to.
Bane sees the twitch. His hand drops below the table. A second later, his foot hooks around my ankle. Light. Deliberate. Staking a claim he'd deny if anyone asked.
I clear my throat again and reach for my own glass of wine–taking a big swallow and forcing it down.
This is my life now.
"Tell us about the house," Atlas says to Margot, and his hand reaches for the pepperoni box at the same moment mine does.
Our fingers collide on the cardboard edge.
Not a brush—a full collision, his hand closing over mine for a fraction of a second, warm and firm, before he pulls back and slides the box toward me with a perfectly composed "go ahead. "
Margot describes the house. Five bedrooms. A wraparound porch.
Steps down to the beach. I nod and smile and contribute the appropriate sounds of enthusiasm while my nervous system processes Bane's ankle against mine, the phantom heat of Atlas's hand still alive on my knuckles, and Zero's gaze boring into me from across the table like a physical weight.
And then I see it.
Not the touching. The watching.
Bane is watching Zero watch me. His jaw works—that slow grind of molars.
Atlas is watching Bane's foot around my ankle. A glance under the table disguised as adjusting his napkin.
And Zero is watching both of them—Bane's proximity, Atlas's glances—with the flat patience of a man who's decided not to compete and is letting the decision cost him in real time.
They're not just interested in me...
They're competing.
The realization settles in my chest. These three men were a unit before me.
They fought and bickered and operated in the uneasy equilibrium of brothers who love each other and irritate each other in equal measure.
And now I'm sitting at their dinner table—Bane's foot hooked around my ankle, Atlas's gaze landing on me in stolen glances, Zero's eyes pinning me from across the table—and I can feel the equilibrium fracturing in real time.
Bane leans toward me, voice low enough that it's just for us. "How was she after I left?" Casual. Warm. "Did she look at the apartment photos again?"
"Like a hundred times." I smile without meaning to. "She zoomed in on the kitchen. I think the microwave impressed her more than the security detail."
His mouth curves. A real smile.
Atlas's hand stills on his glass. His eyes move to Bane. Stay there for a beat too long.
Zero's gaze shifts to Bane. The flat patience from before is gone. What's left is something colder—a stillness that reminds me of the way he looked in the stairwell, the way he looks before he breaks things. His fingers tighten on his wine glass stem until I'm surprised it doesn't snap.
The temperature at the table drops three degrees.
"The apartment is great," I say. A little louder so Atlas and Zero can hear it. Can know what we’re talking about. "She's going to love it. Thank you, Bane. Seriously."