Chapter 33
KAIRO
Iwake up cold.
The couch is still warm under me, but the weight that held me through the night—his weight—is gone. I reach across the cushions on instinct, fingers trailing over empty space and rumpled fabric. The scent of him lingers: salt and rain and something sharper, metallic at the edges.
But he’s not here.
I sit up fast.
The apartment is still dark, save for the gray morning light sneaking past the curtains. The quiet is wrong. Not just morning quiet. Missing quiet. No dishes clinking. No kettle on the stove. No off-key humming from the hallway. My gut twists.
“Ben?” I call.
His bedroom door creaks open, and his little head peeks out, hair sticking up in every direction.
“Where’s Mr. Kuraken?” he asks sleepily, rubbing one eye. “He said we were gonna finish my spaceship drawing today.”
I freeze. Smile, soft and fake. “He—uh—went out early. Grown-up stuff.”
“Oh.” Ben shrugs like that’s normal, like people don’t vanish before dawn and leave nothing but the echo of a promise behind. He disappears back into his room without asking more.
I wish I could.
I grab my compad and start scrolling. Fast.
School staff logs—no Jav check-in. I blink past archived attendance, emergency contacts, flagged alerts.
Nothing. I flip over to the Haven-7 public feeds.
Traffic cams. Pedestrian routes. One grainy shot catches a silhouette I’d know in any light.
He’s crossing the street in the early morning mist, coat pulled tight, head down.
Timestamp: two hours ago.
Direction: outbound.
I keep looking until the feed sputters into static. My hands are shaking.
“What did you do, Jav?” I whisper.
It feels like the floor is tilting beneath me.
I don’t know what makes me do it—maybe desperation, maybe old instincts—but I press Maliek’s name and hit call.
It rings. Once. Twice.
Then, “Kairo.”
His voice is already smug.
“I need to ask you something,” I say.
“Morning to you too.”
“Have you seen Jav?”
A pause. “Not recently.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not.”
“Then tell me where he is.”
Another pause. This one longer.
“Why?” he asks finally. “You worried about your gangster sweetheart? Starting to see what I warned you about?”
I close my eyes. “Please, Maliek. This isn’t about you. This is about Ben.”
That gets him. His voice drops.
“I’ll be there in ten.”
He’s smug when he arrives. Leather coat, smug tilt to his chin, like he’s the hero walking into the ruins after the storm. But there’s something new beneath it. Tightness around his eyes. Like he knows something I don’t.
“Nice place,” he says, stepping inside like he owns it. “He paying for this now?”
“Don’t,” I snap. “Just tell me what you know.”
He holds his hands up. “Didn’t say I knew anything. Just came ‘cause you sounded like you were about to break.”
I stay silent.
“You look like hell,” he adds.
I nod once. “So talk.”
He leans against the kitchen counter. “I saw him yesterday. At the school. After our little chat, I figured he’d crawl back under a rock, but nope—he’s still playing daddy.”
I blink. “Wait—you went to the school?”
He shrugs. “You weren’t answering my calls.”
“You were snooping around Ben’s school?”
“Protective instinct,” he says, all fake-casual. “Which is more than I can say for the syndicate rat you’re sleeping with.”
“Stop calling him that.”
He raises a brow. “It’s what he is, Kairo. Always will be. You don’t get to dip a dagger in glitter and call it a toy.”
I clench my jaw. “He’s trying.”
“Trying?” Maliek barks a laugh. “You think a man like that just walks away from a life like his? You’re not naive.”
“No,” I say slowly. “I’m not.”
His smile fades.
“I already told Ben,” I say. “About Jav. Who he really is.”
The room goes still. Something in Maliek’s posture shifts—stiffens, like a string just got pulled too tight.
“You did what?”
“You heard me.”
His jaw locks. He sets down the mug he never asked to pick up. The air thickens.
“You let him be the father?”
I step forward, voice low. “He is the father, Maliek. You knew that.”
“No,” he says, voice suddenly cold, flat. “I suspected. You let me think—I raised him like—”
“You didn’t raise him!” I shout. “You showed up in pieces when it suited you.”
“Because you shut me out!”
“Because you were never safe!”
He takes one step toward me, then stops himself. “You think Jav is?”
“No,” I whisper. “But he’s here.”
Maliek stares at me. And then something behind his eyes closes.
“I hope you’re right,” he says quietly. “For Ben’s sake.”
He walks out.
I don’t watch him go.
Because I’m already moving.
The Redscale safehouse is buried under three blocks of old freight tunnels, tucked behind a burned-out med station and a noodle stand that never reopens before dusk.
I shouldn’t know where it is. Jav never told me.
But I remember things.
I remember how his voice would change when he got a certain kind of call. I remember how his eyes would scan exits when a name got dropped. I remember where his hand would twitch—habit, memory, muscle.
I find it.
Because I’ve always been watching.
Because when the people you love keep secrets, you learn how to follow their silences.
I don’t have a plan.
I just have fear, and anger, and a heart that’s thudding like a warning beacon in my chest.
And somewhere—somewhere below me, in the belly of this city—Jav is walking into something.
And I can’t let him do it alone.