Chapter 21
The living room has never felt smaller.
Richard stands in front of the fireplace, arms crossed, face carved from stone.
He hasn't sat down. Won't sit down. It's a power move—I recognize it from every meeting I've ever watched through cracked doors, every confrontation Linda staged in our kitchen when I was small.
The person standing has the power. The people sitting are already on the defensive.
We're all sitting.
Atlas takes the armchair by the window. Composed.
Controlled. His bloodied knuckles rest on the armrest like they belong there, like he didn't just use them to split his brother's lip open.
Bane is on the far end of the couch, pressed against the arm, making himself as small as someone his size can manage.
He hasn't looked at me since we came downstairs.
Zero is on the other end of the couch.
And I'm in the middle.
I don't know if this was intentional—if Richard arranged us this way on purpose, putting me between them like some kind of buffer—or if it just happened.
Either way, I can feel Zero's fury radiating off him like heat from a furnace.
He hasn't moved. Hasn't spoken. Just sits there with his jaw locked and his hands flat on his thighs, staring down at the couch between us.
No.
Not nothing.
At me.
I feel his gaze like a physical weight. Heavy.
Cold. The kind of look that says this is your fault and I will make you pay for this without a single word.
My skin prickles. My throat tightens. I focus on the coffee table, on the pattern in the rug, on anything except the ice-blue eyes burning a hole in the side of my face.
"Someone want to explain to me," Richard says, his voice deceptively calm, "how a business disagreement turns into a fistfight in my hallway?"
Silence.
Atlas shifts slightly. "I told you. I'd been drinking. Zero and I have different perspectives on the Tacoma situation, and I let it get out of hand. It won't happen again."
"The Tacoma situation." Richard repeats it slowly. Tasting it. Not buying it. "The Tacoma situation that you've been handling for six months without a single raised voice."
"It's been a stressful week."
"Has it." Not a question. Richard's eyes move from Atlas to Zero. "And you? You have nothing to say?"
Zero's jaw flexes. For a moment, I think he's not going to answer. Then—
"Atlas thinks he knows best. About everything. About the business. About how things should be run." His voice is flat. Controlled. But there's something underneath it, something coiled and waiting. "About who gets to make decisions in this family."
"And that's worth putting holes in my walls."
"Ask him."
Richard's attention swings back to Atlas. "I'm asking both of you. Because right now, I'm looking at two grown men who supposedly run a multi-million dollar operation, and I'm seeing a couple of teenagers who can't keep their hands to themselves."
Margot shifts beside the doorway. I'd almost forgotten she was there—quiet, watching, her arms wrapped around herself like she's trying to hold something in. Her eyes keep drifting to me. I can feel it. That worried, searching look she gets when she knows something's wrong but can't name it.
"Richard," she says softly. "Maybe we should—"
"I want an answer." Richard's voice hardens. "A real one. Not this business dispute bullshit you're trying to sell me."
The silence stretches. Pulls taut.
Zero's head turns.
Slow. Deliberate.
He's looking at me now. Full on. That dead-eyed stare that makes my blood freeze in my veins. His lip is swelling where Atlas hit him, dried blood still flaking at the corner of his mouth, and there's something in his expression that looks like a decision being made.
Like a threat being weighed.
"Maybe," Zero says, his voice dropping to something low and dangerous, "you should ask your stepson why—"
"It was my fault."
Atlas. Cutting in. Smooth and fast, his voice slicing through Zero's like a knife through silk.
Everyone turns to look at him.
He leans forward in the armchair, elbows on his knees, and meets Richard's gaze head-on.
"I pushed too hard. Zero's been under a lot of pressure with the Northwest expansion, and I questioned his judgment in front of Bane.
Publicly. It was disrespectful and unprofessional, and when he pushed back, I escalated instead of backing down.
" He pauses. Lets the words land. "I was wrong. I apologize."
Richard stares at him.
Zero stares at him.
I stare at him, my heart hammering so hard I'm surprised no one else can hear it.
Atlas is lying. So easily, so completely, filling in details that make the story plausible—work pressure, public humiliation, escalation. He's giving Richard something to believe. Something that makes sense.
Something that doesn't involve me.
Richard's jaw works. The vein at his temple is still pulsing, but some of the rigid fury in his shoulders has eased. He wants to believe it. I can see it in his face. He wants this to be what Atlas is selling—a work dispute between brothers, heated but ultimately manageable. Normal.
"And you?" Richard looks at Zero. "You agree with that assessment?"
Zero's eyes are still on Atlas. Something passes between them—a silent conversation I can't read. A threat. A warning. A negotiation.
"Yeah," Zero says finally. The word sounds like it's being dragged out of him with pliers. "That's what happened."
Richard exhales. Long. Slow. The breath of a man who knows he's not getting the full truth but has decided to accept the partial one.
"Fine." He uncrosses his arms. "You want to tear each other apart over business, you do it at the office. Not in my house. Not in front of—" His eyes flick to me, just for a second. "Not in front of family."
Atlas nods. "Understood."
"And you're paying for the wall. And the bourbon. And whatever else you broke up there."
"Of course."
Richard turns away, moving toward the wet bar in the corner. Done. Or at least, done for now. The interrogation is over, the lie has held, and I should feel relieved.
I don't feel relieved.
I feel like I'm going to throw up.
Margot's hand touches my shoulder. Light. Gentle. I flinch before I can stop myself.
"Max." Her voice is soft, meant just for me. "Come with me for a minute?"
I look up at her. She's smiling, but it doesn't reach her eyes. There's worry there. The same worry that's been creeping into her expression for weeks now, every time she looks at me and sees something she can't name.
"I—" My voice catches. I clear my throat. "Sure."
She takes my arm—loosely, carefully, like I'm something fragile—and guides me toward the back of the house. Away from the living room. Away from Richard and his questions. Away from Zero's dead-eyed stare and Atlas's careful lies.
The sliding glass door opens onto the back patio, and suddenly I'm outside.
The night air hits me like a wall—cool, sharp, carrying the salt-and-pine smell of the lake.
I breathe in deep. Try to steady myself.
Try to stop the trembling in my hands that started the moment Zero looked at me like I was something to destroy.
"Walk with me?" Margot asks.
I nod. Don't trust my voice.
We take the stone path that winds around the side of the house, past the garden beds Margot has been slowly filling with lavender and rosemary, down toward the dock.
The moon is out—nearly full, hanging low over the water, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow.
It's beautiful. Peaceful. The kind of night I would have loved, before.
Before everything went wrong.
Margot walks slowly beside me. Matching my pace.
Not pushing. Not prying. Just... present.
The way she's always been. The way she was when I was sixteen and she found me at my worst—a broken foster kid who'd been told for years that he was disgusting, unnatural, wrong—and she sat with me and told me that whatever I was, whatever I became, she would love me anyway.
I believed her then.
I'm not sure I believe anything anymore.
"I've missed you," she says quietly.
I glance at her. "I've been around."
"Have you?" She tilts her head, that knowing look in her eyes. "You've been in the house, sure. But you've been... somewhere else. In your head. Far away." She pauses. "You look thinner, sweetheart."
I don't know what to say to that. She's right. I've barely been eating—the nausea, the headaches, the constant low-grade fever making everything taste like ash. But I can't explain that. Can't tell her why.
"School's been stressful," I manage. "Professor Montley's assignment. The library job."
"Mm." She doesn't sound convinced. "And that's all?"
The question hangs in the air between us. Heavy. Loaded. An invitation to tell her everything—the suppressants, the basement, Zero's hands on my body, the way I can feel myself unraveling hour by hour into something I can't control.
I open my mouth.
Close it.
"That's all," I say.
Margot is quiet for a moment. We've reached the dock now, the wooden planks stretching out over the dark water. She stops at the edge, looking out at the lake, her face half-lit by moonlight.
"I know something's going on," she says. Not accusatory. Just gentle. Sad. "I can feel it. The tension in this house... it's not just between Richard's boys. There's something else. Something no one's telling me."
My chest aches. Actually aches, like someone has reached in and wrapped a fist around my heart.
"Mom—"
"You don't have to tell me." She turns to look at me, and her eyes are bright. Wet. "I'm not going to force it out of you. I just want you to know that I'm here. Whatever it is. Whatever you're carrying. You don't have to carry it alone."
I can't do this.
I can't stand here and let her comfort me when I'm the one ruining everything. When the fight upstairs was about me. When the tension she's sensing is my fault—my body, my secret, my inability to control what I am.