Chapter 15
Bane
I promised Max I'd remember their faces.
I do. Both of them.
The thick-necked guard who pocketed the suppressant syringe and winked at the camera—round face, shaved head, a scar bisecting his left eyebrow. And his partner, the shorter one with the bag. Shovel jaw. Small eyes set too close together. Hands like slabs of raw meat.
I've been seeing those faces every night.
Behind my eyelids when I close my eyes. In the shower.
In the spaces between thoughts. The thick-necked one toying with Max, shoving him against the wall.
The shorter one unzipping a nylon bag full of things I didn't get a clear look at but didn't need to, because my imagination has been filling in the gaps with meticulous, nauseating detail for days.
I remember their faces. And tonight I'm going to fucking rearrange them.
Zero drives. He hasn't spoken since we left the estate—just pulled his keys from his pocket when I came downstairs and looked at me once and that was the conversation.
He's in all black. I'm in dark clothes I don't mind ruining.
Atlas nodded us out the door from his office with a single tilt of his head that meant go, do what needs to be done, don't tell me the specifics.
The address is east side. A walk-up above a laundromat, the kind of building where the hallway smells like mildew and the stairwell lights have been broken for months.
Zero's contacts traced them in under forty-eight hours—Ellis fired them after discovering the unauthorized visit, cut them loose without severance or protection.
Just two men on a couch in a shit apartment, watching television, assuming the worst was behind them.
How fucking wrong they are.
Zero parks. Kills the engine. Sits for a moment with his hands on the wheel, staring at the building's lit windows through the windshield. Third floor. Corner unit. The curtains are drawn but there's a blue flicker underneath—TV glow.
"Rules," I say.
Zero looks at me. The flat expression. The black eyes. I've grown up with this face—watched it at breakfast tables and in boardrooms and across from me in cars exactly like this one. I know what it looks like when Zero is angry. When he's amused.
When he's about to hurt someone.
This is worse than all of them. This is Zero with everything human switched off.
Emptied out, filed away, replaced by the thing our father spent all these years cultivating.
Atlas is the controlled one—purposeful, reluctant, violence as a last resort.
Zero is the one who never needed it to be a last resort.
Who speaks it the way other people speak their mother tongue.
"They stay alive," he says. "Everything else is open."
We take the stairs. Three flights. The hallway is narrow and smells like fried food and cigarette smoke. Apartment 3C. I can hear the television through the door—a game show, someone winning something, studio audience clapping.
I look at Zero. He looks at me.
I kick the door in.
The frame splinters. The door slams inward and hits the wall and the shaved-head guard is on the couch in a stained undershirt with a beer in his hand, and the look on his face—the half-second of confused, slack-jawed surprise before recognition hits—is worth every mile of the drive.
He sees me. Knows me. His face goes white.
"Oh fu—"
Zero is past me before the word finishes.
He crosses the room in three strides, grabs the guard by the front of his shirt, and hauls him off the couch.
The beer can hits the floor. Foam sprays across the carpet.
Zero pins him against the wall with one forearm across his throat—not crushing, just holding.
Positioning. The way a surgeon positions a patient before cutting.
"Where's the other one?" I ask.
A crash from the bedroom. The shorter guard appears in the hallway—shirtless, barefoot, a baseball bat in his hands. He must have heard the door. Must have grabbed what was closest.
He sees Zero holding his partner against the wall. Sees me in the doorway. Raises the bat.
I catch it mid-swing.
The impact jolts through my palm, up my forearm, into my shoulder.
I hold the bat still—his momentum stopped dead, his eyes bulging, his arms shaking from the effort of pushing against a grip that isn't moving.
I tighten my fingers around the aluminum.
Wrench it sideways. His hands slip and the bat is mine and he's stumbling backward into the bedroom doorframe, catching himself against the wall.
I set the bat on the kitchen counter. Won't be needing it.
"Sit down," I say.
He doesn't sit. Lunges. Throws a sloppy right hook that I see coming from a different zip code.
I step inside it, catch his arm, torque his elbow against the joint, and drive him face-first into the hallway floor.
His cheekbone hits the linoleum with a sound like a dropped cantaloupe. I put my knee on his spine.
"I said sit down."
He stops fighting.
Across the room, Zero has the shaved-head guard on his knees. Forearm still across his throat, but lower now—pressing into his collarbone, bending him backward. The guard's hands scrabble at Zero's arm. His face is red. Veins bulging.
"My brother told me about you." Zero's voice is pleasant.
Warm, almost. The voice he uses before he does terrible things—the one that makes your skin crawl precisely because it sounds like he's enjoying a conversation.
"Said you came to his cell. Looped the corridor cameras first. Smart.
Brought a friend." He tilts his head toward where I have the shorter guard pinned. "Brought a bag."
"I don't know what you're—"
"He told me everything." Zero leans closer.
His mouth near the guard's ear, intimate, like he's sharing a secret.
"The part where you grabbed the omega's jaw.
The part where you said fighting's half the fun.
The part where you started ripping his shirt open.
" He pulls back. Studies the guard's face the way someone studies a menu.
"My brother has a very good memory. Described your hands in particular. Said they were... busy."
Zero's free hand closes around the guard's right wrist. Lifts it. Turns it over in the light. Studies the thick fingers, the square palm, the blunt nails. Holds the hand up between them like he's appraising a piece of jewelry.
"These hands." Almost admiring. "These are the ones, right? The ones that touched what's mine?"
He takes the guard's index finger. Bends it backward. The snap is small and precise. The scream isn't.
"I've been thinking about you for days." Zero's voice hasn't changed.
Hasn't risen, hasn't tightened, hasn't done any of the things a voice should do when the person it belongs to is breaking bones.
He sounds like he's catching up with an old friend.
"Wondering what you look like. What you sound like.
My brother described you but descriptions only go so far.
I'm a hands-on learner." He smiles. The smile doesn't reach his eyes.
It doesn't try. "Tell me what was in the bag. "
"Fuck you—FUCK—"
The middle finger. Same motion. Same snap. The guard's scream dissolves into a wet, heaving sob. His body tries to curl in on itself but Zero holds him upright by the collar, keeping him on his knees, keeping his hand exposed.
"The bag," Zero repeats. Patient. Like a teacher with a slow student. "Bane mentioned a bag. What was in it?"
"We were—we were just going to—rough him up a little—scare him—"
"See, that's not what Bane told me." Zero's voice drops.
Conspiratorial. The ring finger snaps and the guard's voice goes somewhere beyond screaming—a high, breathless keen that makes the hair on my arms stand up.
Zero waits for it to subside. Doesn't rush.
"Bane told me you had tools. Specific tools for a specific purpose.
So let's try this again. What. Was. In. The bag. "
The guard is crying. Tears and snot running down his face, his broken hand cradled against his chest, his whole body shaking. The smirk from the facility is gone. The wink. The casual cruelty. What's left is a man learning what happens when the people he hurt have brothers.
"Cuffs," the guard whispers. "Gag. Blindfold. We were going to—" He chokes on it. "Please. Please stop."
"Going to what?" Zero cups the guard's chin. Lifts his face. Forces eye contact. "Look at me. Say it to my face."
"Take turns."
Zero holds the eye contact. Three seconds. Five. His thumb rests against the guard's cheek, almost tender, and the juxtaposition—the gentleness of the touch against what he's about to do—is the most frightening thing I've ever seen my brother do.
And I've seen him do a lot.
"Thank you," Zero says. Soft. Sincere. "That's all I needed to hear."
He takes the guard's left hand.
I watch from across the room with my knee on the shorter guard's back and my stomach turning. Not from the violence—I’ve seen my father’s men do some heinous things over the years.
What turns my stomach is the precision. The patience.
Zero isn't raging. He isn't lost in it. He's present for every second, every snap, every sound, cataloging the damage with the clinical attention of a man building something. A monument. A message.
Each finger deliberate. Each one answered for. The index finger that pointed at Max and said number seventeen. The thumb that dragged across Max's lower lip. Every bone in both hands, broken individually, with the careful spacing of a man who wants each one to register as its own event.
The guard passes out after the seventh finger. Zero slaps him awake. Waits for his eyes to focus. Continues.