Chapter 19
Atlas
The Kline Cartel is testing us.
Three shipments intercepted in two weeks.
Not seized—intercepted. Redirected. Product vanishing somewhere between our Vancouver connection and the distribution hub in Tacoma, then turning up on Kline-controlled corners at markup prices that would be impressive if they weren't using our supply to do it.
I close the laptop and lean back in my chair. The numbers are clear. Margin loss on the suppressant pipeline alone is approaching six figures this quarter, and that's before I factor in the cost of replacing product and keeping our network of clinic fronts operational.
Someone inside is leaking routes. Has to be. The Klines aren't sophisticated enough to intercept us three times running on luck alone. Which means I have a mole. Which means I need Zero to start digging—pulling contacts, squeezing informants, doing what he does best.
Except Zero's been unreliable lately. Distracted. Disappearing for hours without explanation. Coming back with a look in his eyes that I can't read, which bothers me more than the shipment losses because I can always read my brothers.
I file it away. Deal with it later. Right now, I need a drink.
The bourbon is in my desk drawer—Blanton's, the good stuff, reserved for days that earn it.
Today earned it. I pour two fingers into the glass I keep beside the lamp and take the first sip standing, letting the burn settle in my chest. Liquid patience.
That's what Dad used to call it. The first drink is for thinking, Atlas.
The second is for deciding. The third is for forgetting you had to decide at all.
I never have the third.
The evening light is fading through the curtains. Richard and Margot should be home within the hour. I should be downstairs. Should be the composed eldest son who keeps things running smoothly while the empire frays at the edges.
Instead, I'm in my office doing damage control on a war that hasn't officially started yet.
A knock at the door. Three sharp raps. Impatient.
"Yeah."
The door opens. Bane.
He looks wrong. That's my first thought.
My brother is always composed—styled hair, easy confidence, the practiced charm he wears like armor.
Right now, none of that is present. His hair is damp, like he just showered.
His jaw is tight. His eyes are hard and searching and there's something underneath them—something agitated and raw—that I haven't seen since he was fifteen and found out about the business for the first time.
He closes the door behind him. Locks it.
That gets my attention.
"We need to talk," he says.
I lean back in my chair. Study him. Read the tension in his shoulders, the rigid line of his spine, the way his hands keep flexing at his sides like he's fighting the urge to hit something.
"About?"
"Max."
The name lands in my chest like a stone dropped in still water. Ripples spreading outward.
I keep my face neutral. Practiced. "What about him?"
Bane doesn't sit. He paces instead. Three steps to the window, three steps back. His energy is wound so tight the room feels smaller with him in it.
"Have you noticed anything... off about him?" Bane asks. The question comes out carefully. Measured. Like he's testing the water before he dives.
"Define off."
"Don't do that." He stops pacing. Faces me. "Don't play the CEO card with me right now. I'm asking you a straight question."
I hold his gaze. My youngest brother has always been the most emotionally transparent of the three of us. Everything he feels lives right behind his eyes. And right now, those hazel eyes are broadcasting confusion and anger and something else—something hungry and guilty and deeply unsettled.
I know that look.
I've been wearing it for days.
"Sit down," I say.
"I don't want to sit down."
"Bane."
He sits. Drops into the leather chair across from my desk like his strings were cut. His knee bounces. Restless energy with nowhere to go.
"Talk to me," I say. Keep my voice even. Controlled. The voice I use when one of my brothers is spiraling and someone needs to be the anchor. "What happened?"
"I was in the library." He runs a hand through his damp hair. Leaves it sticking up at odd angles. "Max was there. Working on something for school. He'd been there a while."
I wait. Patient. Let him get there on his own.
"He fell. Tried to get up from the chair and his hand slipped and I caught him." Bane's jaw works. The muscle jumps beneath stubble. "And when I caught him—when I was close enough to—"
He stops. Looks at me.
"You smelled it," I say.
Not a question.
Something in Bane's expression cracks open. Relief and dread pouring through the fissure in equal measure.
"You already know." His voice is flat. Accusatory.
"I've suspected." I pull the Blanton's from the drawer again. Pour a second glass. Slide it across the desk to him.
"Since when?" he asks, taking the glass. His hand is steady. The rest of him is not.
"The night he collapsed." I take a slow sip. Let the burn settle in my chest. "His scent was—" I pause. Search for words that don't make me sound as far gone as I am. "Present. Unmistakable."
"Unmistakable." Bane laughs. Sharp. Humorless. A sound that has nothing to do with humor. "That's one word for it. I nearly lost my mind in a fucking armchair, Atlas. From residual scent. He wasn't even in the room anymore and I could barely think straight."
"I know the feeling."
"Do you? Because you're sitting there sipping bourbon like you're discussing last quarter's margins, and I just—" He stops. Takes a drink. A long one. Sets the glass down hard enough that bourbon sloshes over the rim. "He's an omega."
The word fills the room. Heavy. Real. No longer a suspicion or a theory or a possibility I can file away for later analysis. A fact. Undeniable.
"Yes," I say.
"How long has he been hiding it?"
"I don't know. Years, presumably." I take a slow sip.
Let the burn settle while I think it through.
"He has to be on something—some kind of medication that masks his scent.
Suppressants, maybe. Whatever it is, it's failing.
" I think about Max's gaunt face. The weight loss.
The fever that nearly cooked him alive. "His body is going through some kind of withdrawal.
That's the only thing that explains the collapse. "
"Withdrawal." Bane processes this. I can see him turning it over, examining it from different angles the way he does with logistics problems. "So the scent is going to get stronger."
"Yes."
"And his heat—"
"Is coming. Weeks, maybe. Maybe less." I set down my glass. "There's no way to predict the exact timeline."
Bane goes quiet. Stares at his bourbon. The amber liquid catches the lamplight, throwing tiny golden reflections across his fingers.
"An omega," he says again. Like saying it twice might make it feel less impossible. "In our house. Living on our floor. Sleeping twenty feet from three unbonded alphas."
"Yes."
"And you weren't going to tell us."
The accusation stings. More than it should.
"I was still—"
"If you say assessing the situation I'm going to throw this glass at your head."
Fair enough.
"I didn't know how to have this conversation," I admit. The honesty costs me something. Some piece of the armor I wear even around my brothers. "I didn't know how to say our stepbrother is an omega and I can't stop thinking about him without it sounding like—"
I stop.
Bane stares at me. His expression shifts. Recalibrates.
"Like what?" he asks quietly.
I don't answer. Take another sip instead. The bourbon burns all the way down.
Bane reads my silence the way only a brother can. With perfect, devastating accuracy.
"You want him," Bane says. Not accusatory. Almost wondering. Like he's discovering something unexpected and isn't sure if it changes everything or nothing.
"It doesn't matter what I want."
"It does if all three of us want the same thing."
The words hit harder than they should. Because he's right. And we both know it. Whatever Max's scent does—whatever biological alchemy is at work here—it's not selective. It's not choosing one of us. It's pulling all three.
Gravity toward a center. Planets orbiting a sun.
"There's something else," Bane says.
His voice changes. Goes darker. Harder. The raw emotion from a moment ago crystallizes into something colder. The agitation that drove him in here returns, but sharper now. More focused. More dangerous.
I set down my glass. "What?"
"Max was in the kitchen this morning." Bane's knee has stopped bouncing.
He's gone very still. The kind of still that means he's controlling something volatile.
"He could barely sit down. Wincing every time he shifted his weight.
Perched on one hip like putting pressure on—" He swallows.
The muscle in his jaw jumps. "He was in pain, Atlas.
Real pain. Not his head. Not the flu. He was moving like someone who got—"
He stops.
The silence between us becomes a living thing. Thick. Oppressive.
"Like someone who got what, Bane?"
He meets my eyes. "Hurt. By someone bigger and stronger who didn't give a shit whether he was okay when it was over."
The bourbon in my stomach turns to battery acid.
I set the glass down very carefully. Very deliberately. Place it precisely in the center of the coaster. Line up the edges. Square. Neat. Perfect.
Control. I need control right now. Because what's building behind my sternum is not controlled. What's rising through my bloodstream—hot and violent and consuming—is the opposite of everything I've spent twenty-nine years building myself into.
"Who," I say. The word is barely a whisper. Barely human.
"Come on, Atlas." Bane's voice is quiet. Almost gentle. Like he knows the answer is a knife and he's handing it to me blade-first. "You know who."
Zero.
Of course it's Zero.