Chapter 26 #3
"I know that. You know that." I turn to face him fully.
"But Max doesn't. All Max knows is that one brother assaulted him and now another brother rejected him after making him beg for it.
He probably thinks this is all a game to us.
That we're playing with him—hurting him, then being gentle, then pushing him away.
Like he's a toy we pick up when we're bored. "
"No." Atlas presses his hand over his mouth. His eyes are too bright. "That's not—I would never—"
"He woke up alone." My throat is tight. Burning.
"After everything that happened tonight.
After begging us to claim him and being told no.
He woke up alone, in clean underwear he doesn't remember putting on, with no idea why you stopped.
What do you think that felt like? What do you think went through his head? "
Silence. Horrible, crushing silence.
Zero stops pacing. He's facing the wall, hands braced against it, shoulders heaving like he's trying not to put his fist through the drywall. When he speaks, his voice is raw. Scraped clean of its usual sharp edges.
"That fucking idiot." Each word is its own sentence. Its own wound. "That stupid, fucking idiot—"
I check the time on the laptop. 11:47 PM. The meeting was at 10:30.
"He should be back by now." My voice sounds hollow. "If it was just a drug deal, he'd be back by now."
Atlas is already moving. "We need to go. Now. Zero—your car. Bane, you're with me."
We don't argue. Don't hesitate. Within minutes, we're in two separate vehicles tearing through the city streets.
Zero's black sports car ahead of us, weaving through traffic like a missile locked on target.
Atlas's SUV right behind, both of us silent except for the GPS voice guiding us toward an address that feels more like a death sentence with every passing mile.
The industrial district swallows us whole. Warehouses. Shipping containers. The kind of place that time forgot and God abandoned.
And then I see it.
"There." I point through the windshield. "That's Max's car."
It's parked at the curb near the intersection—the exact address from the text messages. Doors closed. Dark inside. No sign of movement.
No sign of Max.
Atlas pulls up behind it. Zero screeches to a halt on the other side, practically launching himself out of the driver's seat before the engine dies.
"Max!" Zero's voice echoes off the empty buildings. "MAX!"
Nothing. Just the distant hum of the highway and the wind rattling through chain-link fences.
I approach the car slowly. Cup my hands against the driver's side window, peer inside. His duffel bag is in the back seat—full of clothes and his laptop charger and the pieces of a life he was trying to escape.
But no Max. He got out. He locked the car like he expected to come back.
He never came back.
"Move." Zero shoulders me aside. Before I can react, he slams his elbow through the driver's side window. Glass explodes inward. He reaches through, unlocks the door, yanks it open. Leans in, searches.
"Keys are gone," he says, voice tight. "He took them with him. He got out. He walked away from this car."
"And then what?" I look around at the empty street, the abandoned warehouses, the shadows that could hide anything. "Where is he?"
"He's not here." Zero is circling the vehicle, looking underneath, checking between the nearby shipping containers like Max might be hiding. His movements are frantic. Desperate. "Where the fuck is he? He should be HERE."
"Zero." Atlas's voice is sharp. "Calm down."
"Don't fucking tell me to calm down!" Zero spins on him, chest heaving. "He's GONE. Someone took him. Someone—"
"I know." Atlas holds up a hand. "I know. But losing control isn't going to help him."
Zero makes a sound—something between a snarl and a sob—and slams his fist into the rear window.
It shatters, glass exploding across the pavement, blood immediately welling from his knuckles where they drag across the broken edges.
He doesn't seem to notice. Just moves to the passenger side.
Then the back. Methodical destruction, like he's trying to break something inside himself along with the glass.
I let him. Atlas lets him. Sometimes violence is the only language Zero speaks, and right now he needs to say something.
I circle to the front of the car while Zero destroys what's left of the windows. The streetlight above is flickering, casting everything in sickly orange light. The hood is cold—the car's been here for a while.
That's when I see it.
A piece of paper, folded neatly, tucked beneath the windshield wiper.
My blood turns to ice.
I pull it free with trembling fingers. Unfold it. The handwriting is crisp. Professional. Not Max's.
To the Graves Brothers—
We have your omega.
Consider this a courtesy notification. The Kline Cartel has been aware of your family's... acquisition for some time now. An unmated omega with connections to your organization is far too valuable an asset to leave unattended.
We'll be in touch regarding terms.
Regards,
T.K.
T.K.
Talbot Kline.
"Atlas." My voice doesn't sound like mine. "You need to see this."
He crosses to me, takes the note, reads it.
I watch his face transform. First confusion—brow furrowing, eyes scanning the words like they don't make sense.
Then understanding, hitting him like a punch to the jaw.
His head snaps back. The color drains from his face so fast I think he might pass out.
His hands start to shake—not a tremor, but a full-body vibration that makes the paper rattle.
"No." The word comes out strangled. "No, this isn't—they couldn't have—"
He reads it again. And again. His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again. Nothing comes out. I've never seen Atlas speechless. I've never seen him anything less than perfectly composed, even in crisis. But right now he looks like a man watching his world collapse in slow motion.
"Atlas." Zero's voice cuts through. He's stopped destroying the car, standing in a pile of shattered glass, hands dripping blood. "What does it say?"
Atlas just stares at the paper. His jaw works, but no words come.
"Atlas. What the fuck does it say?"
Nothing. Atlas is frozen, trapped in some private horror I can't reach.
Zero crosses the distance in three strides and rips the note from Atlas's hands. His eyes scan the page. I watch his expression shift—confusion to disbelief to something I don't have a name for. Something beyond rage. Beyond fear.
"'We have your omega.'" Zero reads it aloud, voice barely above a whisper. "'The Kline Cartel has been aware of your family's... acquisition for some time now.'" His hands are shaking too now, blood smearing across the white paper. "'We'll be in touch regarding terms. T.K.'"
He looks up. Meets my eyes. Then Atlas's.
"They took him." The words come out hollow. Dead. "They fucking took him. This wasn't some random dealer. This was a trap. They were waiting for him."
Atlas finally finds his voice. "Kline." He says the name like a curse. "This wasn't random. They've been watching him. Waiting for an opportunity." His hands curl into fists at his sides. "They used the suppressants as bait. Drew him out. And we—" His voice cracks. "We let him walk right into it."
For a moment, Zero doesn't move. Doesn't breathe. And then—
He kicks in the driver's side door. The metal crumples inward with a shriek. "FUCK!" The word tears out of him, raw and animalistic. "FUCK!"
"Zero." Atlas's voice cuts through the destruction. "Enough. We need to think."
"Think?" Zero whirls on him, face twisted with fury. "They have him, Atlas. They have Max. While we were standing around arguing about who gets to claim him, someone else took him. And you want to THINK?"
"I want to get him back." Atlas is already pulling out his phone. "And that means doing this right. Not charging in blind."
He dials. Puts the phone to his ear. His voice shifts—hardens into a bite.
"Morrison. It's Graves. I need you on standby—we may be looking at a ransom situation or worse.
Kline Cartel involvement. Yes. Keep it quiet for now.
" He hangs up. Dials again. "Reyes. Rally everyone.
I mean everyone—every man we have who handles the dirty work.
Full alert. I want eyes on every Kline property in the city by dawn. "
Zero is pacing, hands still dripping blood onto the pavement, his whole body vibrating with barely contained violence.
Atlas turns to me. "Bane. I need you to—"
"Fuck that." The words come out before I can stop them. "I'm going straight to Talbot Kline's front door. We're going to discuss this alpha to alpha."
"No." Atlas's voice is sharp. "That's exactly what they want. They're baiting us into a confrontation."
"I don't care what they want. They have Max."
"And if you show up at Kline's door alone, they'll have you too.
Or they'll kill you and send Max pieces of your body as a message.
" Atlas steps closer, his jaw tight. "I need you to handle the business.
Make sure all our shipments and deliveries run clean while we pull manpower to search. Keep everything afloat."
"You want me to do logistics while Max is—" I can't even finish the sentence. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Someone has to. The organization doesn't stop because we're in crisis. If anything, this is when our enemies will look for weakness—"
"I'm not taking a backseat on this." I'm in his face now, chest to chest, my own rage finally boiling over. "You don't get to bench me like some errand boy. He's not YOUR omega, Atlas. You don't get to make all the decisions about his rescue like this is another business acquisition."
Atlas's eyes flash. His posture shifts—suddenly we're not brothers, we're two alphas squaring off, the air thick with pheromones and tension.
"Someone has to lead," he says quietly. "Someone has to make the hard calls. That's what I do. That's what I've always done."
"Maybe that's the problem." I don't back down. "You've been making decisions for everyone—for Zero, for me, for Max—and look where it got us. He ran because he thought we were playing games with him. Maybe if you'd actually talked to him instead of just deciding what was best—"
"Don't put this on me—"
"ENOUGH."
Zero's voice cuts through the night like a blade. We both turn.
He's standing in the middle of the street, hands still bloody, glass crunching under his boots. His face is transformed—not rage anymore, not desperation. Something harder. Sharper. The look of a man who's found absolute clarity in the middle of chaos.
"We get him back." Each word is a hammer blow.
"Nothing else matters. Not the business.
Not the shipments. Not who's in charge or who made what decision.
" He steps closer, his eyes moving between us.
"We get Max back. I don't fucking care what has to be done.
I don't care who we have to kill or what we have to burn or what lines we have to cross. "
He stops. His chest is heaving, but his voice is steady.
"He's ours. All of ours. We get him back. Then we can fight over him all we want." He looks between us, something hard and uncompromising in his eyes. "But not now. Now we work together. We get our boy back. And anyone who took him is going to learn what happens when they fuck with what’s ours."
The silence that follows is absolute. The three of us standing in the wreckage of Max's car, surrounded by shattered glass and dried blood and the weight of everything we've done wrong.
Atlas nods. Once. Sharp.
Zero doesn't nod. He just turns and walks back toward his car, leaving bloody footprints on the pavement.
"I know people in the Kline organization," he says over his shoulder. "People who owe me favors. Or fear me enough to talk." He yanks open the driver's door. "I'll find out where they're keeping him. You two figure out how we're getting him out."
He peels away into the night, taillights disappearing around a corner.
Atlas and I stand in silence for a long moment, staring at the empty street.
"He's right," Atlas says finally. "Max is ours. All of ours." He turns to look at me, and for just a second, I see something vulnerable beneath the CEO mask. "We can fight about the rest later. After we bring him home."
I nod. "After we bring him home."
We get in the SUV. The engine roars to life.
And somewhere across the city, in a room we haven't found yet, Max is waiting.
Hold on.
We're coming.
And when we find you, we're never letting you go again.
The story isn't over.
Max is gone. The brothers are reeling. And the darkness closing in? It's only just begun.