Chapter 26 Marcus
MARCUS
The problem is, the Game isn’t a game anymore.
I’ve bent it until it barely resembles its original shape. I’ve rewarded her too generously, broken rules I wrote myself, and crossed lines that were supposed to exist for a reason. Worse still, I don’t regret any of it.
It felt right.
Damn it, it felt fucking divine.
She asked us to come together. Not just her pleasure. She asked me to be there with her. I would’ve been satisfied giving her everything she wanted. But that kind of closeness changes a man. Even me. Wolf or Marcus.
Iris isn’t Belladonna. I didn’t ration trust with her the way I once did, didn’t build walls brick by brick, waiting for the inevitable betrayal. Maybe that makes me careless. Maybe it makes me stupid. But the truth is simpler. I never had feelings for Belladonna.
With Iris, I do.
A lot.
I built the Game to keep a distance. But she erased it.
Control was the point of the Game. She was the flaw.
And now my mind is consumed by her vision. Naked and painted, her tits protruding, her pussy wet from wanting me.
“And that leaves you, Lockwood.”
I snap upright, blinking. “What?”
Liam sits across from us in his absurd director’s chair with his feet kicked up, clearly enjoying himself. His Long Island house has an entire room dedicated to meetings like this—screens, maps, and a whiteboard I’ve never once seen used properly.
“It’s fine, Doc,” Max says, rolling his chair closer and patting my shoulder. “We’re all mere humans. Some of us just dissociate better.”
“I wasn’t dissociating,” I say.
“You were staring at the wall,” Max replies. “The same wall. For a while.”
“What do you want to know?” I ask, rubbing my face.
“Theo,” Liam says. “You promised you’d fill me in.”
I nod. “Yes.”
“And that was,” he continues, his gaze narrowing as though lining up the days, “three…four weeks ago?”
“I’ve been overbooked,” I say. “My surgery hours tripled. You’ll have to forgive me.”
Liam leans forward. “Marcus, Mr. Johnson’s ferrets forgot about contraception and multiplied at an alarming rate. I still made time for you and your unholy mess of a Game.”
“That’s unfortunate,” I mutter.
“Don’t deflect,” Liam says. “You show up late, distracted, and smelling of trouble. So…Theo.”
I exhale slowly. As a matter of fact, I’ve come prepared.
“Remember Blanket?” I ask.
Liam’s posture shifts, his attention locking in. “That adorable stray? Of course. What about him?”
“This turned up a few days before Blanket did,” I say, sliding an envelope across the table.
Liam opens it, the movement languid. Until the contents spill out.
“Shit,” he mutters.
Max leans forward. “What the hell is that?”
Liam doesn’t touch it again. He studies it instead, his eyes narrowing. “A tibia. Primate. Likely a macaque.”
So I wasn’t wrong.
Max lifts the note and reads it aloud. “Every empire has a fracture point.”
Silence presses in.
“You were blackmailed,” Liam grits, “and you didn’t tell us?”
“I’m telling you now,” I reply evenly. “The fake wolf. The man who tried to burn The Trap. And the one Theo walked around the cellar with. All the same person.”
Max frowns. “Slow down. What do you mean? Who walked with Theo?”
“Theo told me that weeks before the fire, he showed ‘me’ the east cellar and discussed The Trap’s renovation. He pointed out an old passage from the Prohibition era.” I pause. “The same passage that man disappeared through.”
Max shakes his head. “It’s Theo. He would’ve known it wasn’t you.”
“Unless,” I say, “that man looked like me. Exactly like me. Moved like me. Sounded like me.”
Both of them inhale at the same time.
“I have a brother,” I say, though the words sound wrong. “I’m sure of it.”
Liam leans back slowly. “Did Theo tell you?”
“No. It’s what he didn’t say.”
The room goes quiet.
“A twin?” Liam asks at last.
I nod.
“And of course, there’s no CCTV,” Liam adds. “You don’t run cameras when you’re unmasked at The Trap.”
I spread my hands. “Exactly.”
Max rubs a hand over his jaw. “You’re sure she’s not involved?” he says carefully. “I don’t mean to pry. But don’t forget Belladonna—”
“I know,” I cut in. Then, calmer, I continue, “Iris is clean. I checked her circle. Her best friend. Her parents. All ordinary people. If anything, she struggles more than most artists. Her father is battling bone marrow cancer, and her parents’ place upstate is barely holding together.
She works, and she grinds. No dodgy associations or sudden disappearances. ”
“How can you be so sure?” Liam asks.
“Reuben,” I say, mentioning my undercover taxi driver. “She uses him regularly.”
That lands.
“And Theo?” Max asks. “Why keep quiet?”
“I think he was protecting Adriana,” I say. “He didn’t want the truth to replace her as my mother.”
Liam exhales through his nose. “I’m sorry, man.”
Max’s hand settles on my shoulder again.
“I’m going to talk to Theo again,” I say.
“Let one of us come with you,” Max offers immediately. Liam nods.
“No.” I stand. “I’ll handle this.”
Neither of them argues.
I find Theo in bed.
The oxygen concentrator hums at a steady pitch beside him, the sound so constant that it almost disappears.
Clear tubing runs from the machine to a simple face mask fitted over his nose and mouth.
His chest rises and falls, but not with purpose.
The movement is shallow and delayed, as though the signal to breathe has to travel a longer distance to reach him.
I step closer and take his hand. “Theo, it’s me.”
Nothing.
There’s no irritation, no sluggish turn of his head, and no reflexive squeeze of my fingers. Just dead weight, warm but absent.
My eyes move automatically. The finger probe is blinking red, the pulse oximeter hovering low but deceptively steady, numbers that might pass for acceptable in a man with advanced pulmonary disease. Chronic hypoxia. A baseline I’ve learned to read without panic.
Why wasn’t I told he was unresponsive?
I glance toward the door. “Marta?”
No answer.
Then, Theo’s breathing changes.
At first, it’s subtle, a delay between breaths that stretches a beat too long. Then a wet sound creeps in. His chest jerks, his shoulders lifting as his body attempts a breath that doesn’t quite arrive.
“All right,” I murmur, already moving.
I lift the mask and tilt his head, checking alignment and airway patency. There’s nothing to clear. No obstruction, no foreign body, no mechanical fix.
This isn’t choking.
This is a failure.
“Stay with me, Theo,” I say, already pulling my phone from my pocket. I dial his doctor, but the line keeps ringing.
I check his pulse again.
It’s there but thready. Too fast and disorganized, as if the heart is compensating for something that happened earlier. Something catastrophic.
I raise the head of the bed and reposition him to ease the work of breathing. I increase the oxygen flow. The concentrator responds instantly, the hiss growing louder.
But it changes nothing.
His saturation dips, and the monitor chirps, pauses, and chirps again. It’s less insistent now, almost uncertain.
“Dr. Weiss,” I say, switching to speaker the moment the line connects. “It’s Marcus Lockwood. I’m with Theo. He’s on home oxygen, mask delivery. He’s unresponsive and exhibiting agonal respirations with retained secretions.”
“I’m on my way,” Weiss says immediately. “What’s the saturation?”
“Mid-eighties, but it doesn’t match the presentation.”
“How long has he been like this?”
“I was not informed,” I reply, my words clipped now. “What’s his baseline?”
There’s a pause.
Too long.
“Marcus,” Weiss says carefully, “his pulmonary function declined sharply this week. We adjusted his oxygen, but his CO? retention worsened. He refused admission.”
Theo gasps again, short and ineffective. His chest barely moves this time, the effort uncoordinated.
“I’m losing him,” I say.
“I’m almost there, Marcus,” Weiss answers. “But you know how it is. If he experienced a prolonged hypoxic event, restoring oxygen wouldn’t reverse the damage. At this stage, his lungs can’t exchange, and his brain may no longer be directing respiration.”
I watch the numbers fall, meaningless now. And I feel the absence before the machine confirms it.
Theo exhales.
And does not inhale again.
I check anyway. Carotid pulse, nothing. His pupils fixed. No respiratory effort.
Time of death.
The room goes quiet, except for the hum of the machine that no longer serves a purpose.
On the phone, Weiss exhales. “I’m so sorry, Marcus. You should have been told. But Theo was adamant. He didn’t want you involved.”
My grip tightens around the phone. “And you listened to him?”
“I’m sorry.”
The apology doesn’t land. Nothing does.
For a moment, I just stand there. Then I pace, turning at the same spots each time. The room feels too small, too orderly for what just happened inside it.
Something is wrong.
I don’t know how I know. I just do.
A drawer near the bed sits slightly open. Rushed. I pull it fully and find an old photo album wedged inside, the spine bent where it was shoved too quickly.
I’ve never seen it before.
The pages are thick and yellowing at the edges. The photos were of Theo and Adriana when they were young. Before me. Before anything complicated. I flip through faster than I should.
My gaze stops at a space where a photo should be. But all I see are clean edges. The photo was deliberately removed.
I close the album and turn back to the bed.
My father is dead, and I’m cataloguing evidence. What kind of man does that?
Through the silence, Weiss’s voice crackles faintly from the phone. “Marcus? Are you there? Talk to me.”
I don’t answer.
I straighten the blanket and smooth a crease. My hands keep moving, even as my thoughts lag a step behind them. I check the monitor again, though I already know what it will say. Then I pick up the mask and set it back exactly where it was. Order feels important. Necessary.
The room holds. But I don’t.
I walk to the window and back. Then again. My phone is still in my hand, the screen dark. I should call someone else, but I don’t. Instead, I count machines, pills, and cords. Anything that gives my mind something solid to grip.
I desperately want someone to be here. To stand beside me. To say nothing. To just be.
Is that really too much to ask?
Then I think of her. Iris.
Not as Wolf. Not for the Game.
But as Marcus, the nowhere son, the man who is reeling.
I don’t want a date. Dates are for people with room for small talk. I want to sit across from her and say, “My father just died, and I don’t know what to do with that.”
She would understand. She has the depth to take that kind of absurdity. I learned that the day she burst into my very human clinic with an injured, mangy stray, demanding help as if there were no other possible outcome.
She defends what she loves. I’ve seen it in the way she shows up for her father.
But she’s capable of more than familial devotion.
I’m certain of that. Even inside the Game, where everything was meant to stay a fantasy, I felt it.
She was careful with me. She took me into account, as though I were a man who meant something to her.
With her, I don’t have to be clever or composed. And I believe, maybe foolishly, I deserve that kind of refuge.
I close my eyes, and it surprises me how clearly it forms.
She is a place that feels like mine.
But where do I even begin to make it real?
I return to the bedside and take Theo’s hand again.
He’s cold now. And peaceful enough that I can’t hold his face in my line of sight.
That’s when my attention catches on a small wrongness.
The oxygen tubing, perfectly aligned and running cleanly from machine to mask, bears a faint compression mark near the frame of the bed. It’s not a kink. It’s a clamp mark.
The line must have been pinched. Long enough to matter, but short enough to be hidden once released.
My chest tightens. Whatever he had or hadn’t done in his life, he was still my father. The only man who stood by me, deformed or perfect.
“I’m sorry, Theo,” I say. “I’ll get to the bottom of this.”