Chapter 18 #3
"That was a lie. The brothers told you that to protect you.
To protect me." I swallow. "They found out what happened.
They got me out. Bane walked into that building and brought me home.
Atlas built a legal case to bring the whole organization down.
Zero—Zero would have burned it to the ground if they'd let him.
" My voice cracks for the first time. I let it.
"They saved my life, Mom. While you were downstairs making dinner, while Richard was in his office—they were getting me out of a concrete cell.
I need you to know that. Whatever you think of what you saw last night—they saved my life.
They protected me when nobody else even knew I was gone. "
The silence on the other end is total. I can hear her trying to breathe.
"There were others in that place. Omegas.
Kids, some of them." I swallow. "I went to the police today.
I gave a full statement—everything that happened to me.
The cell, the auctions, names, dates, all of it.
Wren drove me. My testimony is the only thing that could bring these people down. So I used it."
"Max—" Her voice is shattered. Rebuilt. Shattered again. She's processing kidnapping and trafficking and a cell and auctions and her son in a police station all at once and I can hear it breaking her in real time.
"It's handled, Mom. The police are moving on it. The people who did this to me are going to answer for it. I handled it. Today. On my own." I take a breath. "The only thing left is you and me. And I need you to hear me when I say—I'm safe. I'm in love. And I'm right where I want to be."
She sobs on the other side.
I’m ready to deliver the biggest blow. "I'm not going to Wisconsin with you."
The silence stretches. I can feel it pulling—the distance between us, the phone line, the miles she's already put between herself and the estate. She's probably already mentally checked out of this place and ready to sequester me away until all this blows over.
"My home is with them," I say. "I love you. You gave me a life. You gave me a name and a bed and a mother and I will never stop being grateful for that. But I'm not a kid anymore and my home is with Atlas and Bane and Zero and I need you to let me have that."
She's quiet for a long time. I close my eyes, imagining what her face is doing right now and it breaks my heart. I wish I could hug her, hold her hand. I wish I could have told her this in person.
I’m a coward for not.
"I'm–I’m going to Wisconsin," she says. Quiet. "I need time, Max. I need—I can't process all of this right now."
"I know."
A pause. Long. I can hear her breathing. I can hear her fumbling with things in the background as if she’s rushing to get to the airport, to leave this reality and never look back.
"Are you–are you happy, Max? With them?"
Three words. Asked through tears, through distance, through the wreckage of a night that took everything she thought she knew about her son and set it on fire.
I look around the hotel suite.
Zero is on the floor with his head in my lap, wearing my shirt. Bane is beside me with his fogged glasses and his hand in my hair. Atlas is on my other side, steady, present, his thumb still moving against my pulse.
"Yes," I say. No hesitation. For the first time in my life, none. "After all these years—yes. I'm… I’m over the moon, Mom."
She doesn't respond. I can hear her breathing—one inhale, shaky, held too long. Then the line goes dead.
I sit there with Bane's phone in my hand and the silence buzzing against my ear.
I set the phone on the coffee table. Slide down on the couch until my head is on Bane's shoulder. Pull Zero's hand up from my lap and lace my fingers through his. Feel Atlas's thumb still moving, still steady, still counting my pulse like he's making sure I'm real.
The city light is coming through the hotel windows, dim and amber. The suite is quiet. The bonds are quiet. I feel calm–peaceful.
For the first time, everything is quiet.
It's over.
The running. The hiding. The pills and the performance and the locked doors and the closed offices and the secrets kept in hallways at three in the morning.
The tension, the uncertainty, the fear. The letters under doors.
The gravel under bare feet. The fist that wasn't aimed at me but found me anyway.
The fountain I sat on when my legs gave out.
All of it. Over.
Not fixed. Not healed. Margot will be on a flight soon to Wisconsin and Richard is alone and I still have a lot of healing to do. We all do. There's a notebook on the coffee table full of things I haven't finished writing.
But the four of us are here. In a hotel suite. Together. And nobody is hiding. Nobody is performing. Nobody is managing or protecting or deciding what someone else can handle.
We're just here.
I close my eyes.
Zero's hand in mine. Bane's shoulder under my head. Atlas's thumb on my pulse.
I wasn’t lying when I said it. I'm over the moon.
I’m so happy I can barely stand it.
And I can’t wait–I can’t wait–for what the future holds.