9. Chapter 9
Maddox
The phone is an extension of my hand, a weapon I’ve been firing for the last twenty minutes.
I’m leaning back in my chair, the Italian leather creaking under my weight, as I tear through my contact list. Every favour, every piece of blackmail, every dark secret I’ve tucked away for a rainy day—I’m burning them all to ash to make sure Arthur Morrow ceases to exist. I want him fucking dead by sun up.
The cut on Ry’s jaw wasn’t nearly as deep as the one that needed suturing on his ear, still the memory of the needle pulling through his severed flesh makes my knuckles blanch white.
If that wound leaves so much as a silver line of a scar, I’m going to dig up Morrow’s rotting corpse.
I’ll flay him open Viking style, rib by rib, and display the carcass off the Hollywood sign.
I want the whole world to watch the crows picking at his remains so that they unequivocally know: you do not fuck with what’s mine.
The reflection I cast in the darkened window of my office looks like a stranger—my messy blonde hair caught in the silver light of the city, looking less like a businessman and more like the person I was a lifetime ago, before all of this.
It’s the same hair—thicker now, perhaps, but just as unmanageable as it was—that I used to see in the hallway mirror of a house that was never truly mine.
Even now, the faint, sterile scent of the office cleaning crew triggers a phantom ache in my teeth. It’s a Pavlovian response to the smell of disinfectant, dragging me back to a living room that was too clean, a life that was too small, and a man who was too tired to care.
Uncle Richard’s house always smelled like baby powder and bleach.
Normal smells. Smells that had grated on my nerves every day for the ten months after my father died.
I sat slumped on the edge of the stiff armchair, listening to the small, irritating whimper of the baby from the next room while Aunt Carol was pretending I wasn't there, too busy wiping down the already spotless kitchen counter, her jaw tight enough to crack. Her blonde hair was tied back in a picture-perfect manner; it didn’t move an inch no matter how hard she scrubbed at an invisible stain, probably imagining it was my face.
Richard stood over me, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his sensible work pants.
He looked so worn out, like a cheap shirt washed too many times.
He was my father’s brother, but where Dad was loud and reckless, Richard was quiet, predictable, and weak.
"I tried, Maddox," he said, the words flat and exhausted.
"God knows I tried. Every night, every appointment.
But the teacher said you punched a hole in the wall next to her head, then there were the fights in the cafeteria, the missing money from my wife's purse, the weed. "
I kept my eyes trained downward while I picked at the fraying thread on the armrest. I had my own debts now, small ones—to the dealers, to the kids that bullied me, to the cops who had hauled me out of that rusty Honda last night.
But at least these debts were mine. At least I could see them coming.
At least I wasn’t stupid enough to let them accumulate, not like my old man.
"The police calling us at two in the morning.
Boosting a car, Maddox, really? Christ sake, you're twelve years old , and you're already.
.." He cut himself off, his voice cracking with defeated rage.
The greying edges of his short-cut hair made him look so much older than thirty-five.
I guessed even then that the stress of raising a delinquent nephew while his wife complained every night would do that to a man.
"Damaged goods," I supplied, looking up at him. It was easier when they just said it. I’d heard it before—from the school counselor, from Carol’s frantic phone calls. Everything was always my fault so why pretend that it wasn't?
Richard’s face crumpled. "Your father...
he did this to you," he whispered, pushing the fault onto the dead man, which was exactly what I hated.
"He left you a legacy of ruin. I can't fix that.
I can't stay up all night waiting for a call that you're dead in a ditch," he relented with a broken sob, seemingly close to tears.
Aunt Carol came into the doorway, holding her precious bundle of joy. She looked at me, then at Richard, and shook her head once, sharply mouthing "No more."
Richard swallowed hard, his posture giving way entirely, all pretense of normalcy was over.
"They're coming for you," he whispered, his voice barely above a breath.
"The police. I signed the papers this morning.
I told them I did everything I could, but I can't—I can't risk my family.
You're going into the system, Maddox. Juvie. "
A wave of cold, sharp relief sliced through the dead feeling in my gut. I'm finally getting out of here; away from the ugly floral wallpaper and the whining baby and the smell of clean surfaces that mocked the blood I keep seeing on my hands. Bring on Juvie, anywhere's better than this house.
A sharp, official knock echoed on the front door—Richard flinched violently, like he’d just been slapped, and backed away from me.
He stood there lamely in the shadow of his scowling wife, staring at me with a desperate mix of pity and fear.
The man was so incredibly weak. So I stood up, pulling my shoulders back and grabbed my stained backpack—the one I carried everywhere, the one that hid the memory of that day—and walked toward the hallway to open the door myself, where two officers stood in crisp dark uniforms, their faces hardened.
"Maddox Bakker?" the female officer asked.
"The one and only," I announced. My voice was even, protraying how little I cared about being thrown away like garbage. How bad could juvie be? There's nothing left for me to lose anyway .
I didn't look back at Richard, who was dissolving into tears behind me. I didn't look at Carol, or their stupid baby Callum who never stopped whining. I stepped out onto the porch, leaving the smell of baby powder and disappointment behind.
As the officers led me down the walkway past the perfect, untouched lawns, I felt the final, definitive click of a door closing behind me. The clock had run out again. And this time, I was going to pay the debt myself.
A siren wails somewhere down on the street, the sound rising through the glass of my office and snapping the memory shut.
I let out a stuttering breath I didn't realise I was holding, the condensation of it clouding the reflection of the man I became. The boy on that porch would have been impressed by this office, but he would’ve recognised the look in my eyes.
I’m still walking toward the door, still waiting for the debt to be collected.
"Maddox, honey. Deep breaths, before you put your fist through the glass." A warm familiar voice floats across the room breaking me from my trance. I turn around as my assistant Astrid closes the heavy office door behind her. She’s a wave of calm; dressed in a sharp, tailored cream pantsuit that glows against her dark skin. At fifty, she’s the only person in this building who doesn't look at me like I’m a god or a monster.
She looks at me like I'm her child who’s about to make a grave mistake, and the tension in my shoulder softens just by being in her orbit .
Astrid walks toward the desk, her heels making a soft, rhythmic thumping on the rug near the couch that somehow manages to settle the frantic buzzing in my ears.
She doesn't flinch at the papers I’ve scattered around the place, or the manic light I know is in my eyes.
Instead, she reaches out and takes the phone from my hand, setting it back on the cradle with a firm, motherly finality.
"I want a new security detail," I command, my voice dropping to a deep, ragged vibration. "Get me ex-special forces. I want men who’ve forgotten how to blink without being told to. And I’m freezing the payroll for the current team.
All of them! They don't get a cent for their cheap beer until they give up the rat who looped those feeds.
Someone in this building was paid to look away while Rylen got hurt. "
Astrid sighs, a long, weary sound that deflates some of the tension in the room.
"You can’t freeze their pay for a month.
Labor laws aside, you’ll lose the good ones along with the bad.
” She reaches out to squeeze my hand—her palm is warm, her gold rings catching the dim light.
I slump back into my desk chair, the anger still a low thrum, but the blinding red rage is fading into a dull ache.
"Rylen is already down there making them wish they’d never been born. You don't need to starve their families to get results; he’s doing a fine job of that himself," she says earnestly, her gaze searching mine, and for a second, I feel like a kid again, being caught with bloodied knuckles.
"That boy takes every crack in these walls as a personal insult to you. Don't make his job harder by burning the foundation down just because you’re spiralling,” she murmurs, her grip loosening as she pulls back to her full height.
"Maddox, there's something else—Cass is quitting. After hearing Morrow was coming back for her...” Astrid pauses, her dark eyes softening just enough to be annoying,like she pities me. “She’s terrified. The girl’s refusing to even leave her apartment, let alone step foot in our lobby.”
I rake my fingers through my matted hair, the sharp, metallic scent of iron still clinging to my skin from when I was stitching Rylen’s face.
My eyes drift shut, and I draw in a long, ragged breath, holding the air in my lungs until it burns before releasing it in a heavy, resigned sigh.
"Set her up somewhere nice. Far away from LA. Put a year’s worth of rent on my personal card as penance. "