11. Chapter 11
Andre kissed him again before either of them managed a second sentence, and this time neither of them pretended it was about comfort.
No hands on shoulders, no pat on the back.
Just Andre's mouth on his, hungry and deliberate, like he'd been waiting all of their long years apart for this exact moment.
"We can't keep doing this," Andre said against his mouth, not stopping.
"I know." Marcus didn't stop either. He slid a hand up the back of Andre's neck, into the short hair there, and felt Andre exhale through his nose.
"I have a badge. You have a body count." Andre's hand fisted in his shirt, the same desperate grip as before, cotton pulled tight over Marcus's sternum, like letting go was the thing he was actually afraid of. "This ends badly. It has to. I can't survive losing you again."
"I know that too."
"Say something that isn't 'I know.'"
Marcus pulled back just far enough to look at him. He locked into eyes so dark they'd always seemed black, such a stark contrast to the ice blue of his own. "I'm not going to lie to you in the middle of kissing you. Ask me again when I'm not."
Andre made a sound that wasn't quite a laugh, low in his chest, half-swallowed, and kissed him harder, both hands fisting in Marcus's shirt now instead of hesitating over it.
"Marcus." A fist hit the door hard enough to rattle the frame. Nate's voice, raw in a way that had Marcus moving before his brain finished processing what kind of raw it was. "Open the door right now."
They broke apart. Andre wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, the same motion as the day before, like some part of him needed a physical reset before he could be anyone other than the person he'd just been.
Marcus opened the door.
Nate didn't wait to be let in. "Jude's in the common room. So is everyone else. You need to be there."
The common room was fuller than usual, the vast space seeming almost small by the time Marcus reached it.
Jude was curled up on the couch, knees pulled up, still in his stage clothes gone gray with sweat that had long since gone cold.
Seth beside him, one arm around his shoulders.
Trip and Jack stood by the window, both serious and clearly just as angry as everyone else.
Zain was the one talking, fast and low, phone in hand. "I want to know how a burner number with no history anywhere reaches Seth's actual phone. Not a work line. His real number. The one eight people on this whole fucking planet have."
"I've been asking myself the same question for over an hour." Ghost said. He was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, laptop open, and he didn't look up. "I don't have an answer. I'm working on it!"
"Ghost." Marcus crossed the room. "Look at me.
" He and Ghost had been in this thing together for along time.
He know how deeply disturbed his autistic friend had to be.
He wouldn't be okay until he solved the problem because he took his job to protect their…
family… seriously. This breach was personal to him and Marcus could see the blood that wasn't visible from the wound of this attack on their most sunny member.
Jude was everyone's favorite, soft where they were hard.
Gentle when they were sharp. He had changed everything for the better for all of them, not just Nate.
Ghost looked up. Whatever was on his face wasn't the calm, unbothered thing Marcus was used to seeing there. "It shouldn't have been possible," he said. "I built that lockdown myself. I've rebuilt it twice since the Rouge job. Nobody gets a number out of it. Nobody."
"Somebody did," Zain said, not unkindly, which somehow made it worse.
"Yeah." Ghost closed the laptop. "Somebody did." He leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, clearly working to breathe deeply. It hurt to see his obvious pain.
Jude hadn't said anything since Marcus walked in. Marcus crouched in front of the couch anyway. "You're okay?"
"I'm fine." Jude's voice didn't match the claim. "I didn't even know until Seth told me after. I finished the set. I bowed. I signed a setlist for some kid in the front row." He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes. "He was a few feet away from me and I was signing a setlist."
"You weren't supposed to know," Marcus said. "That was his point. That's how Drakov works."
"Don't." Nate's voice cracked on the single word.
"No one is supposed to know us. We've worked hard for years to make that a fucking fact.
And this asshole was right there. He could have…
could have…" His voice broke and Marcus felt the failure in his chest personally.
He loved this men, his brothers and their partners.
Their family. And now the systems that had always kept them lost in the darkness and safe from those who would come after them were failing because the man they were after knew him.
Had always known him. And now he was done watching from the shadows.
He'd broken that promise once already tonight, just by being the one Drakov had been watching for in the first place.
Andre's hand found his shoulder from behind. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
Zain's eyes moved to the hand on Marcus's shoulder, and his jaw set hard enough that Marcus could see the muscle jump.
"That's convenient timing." His voice had gone flat in a way that carried further than shouting would have. "Drakov's been quiet for years. Then he's not, and it's the same week you walk back into Marcus's life. That's not a coincidence I believe in."
"Zain." Marcus said it as a warning. Zain didn't look at him, eyes locked and hard on Andre. Zain was shaken, they all were, and Marcus knew that a shaken Zain lashed out.
Andre didn't step back. "You think I made this happen?"
"I think this crew has stayed alive for years by being careful, and that seems to have fallen apart the day you showed up at our door." Zain's jaw worked. "You want to explain that timing, or do I have to?"
"I don't owe you an explanation for anything." Andre's voice stayed level, but he'd moved half a step closer without seeming to notice he'd done it. "I owe Marcus one. I already gave it to him."
"Not good enough."
"It wasn't for you to accept."
Zain closed the last of the distance between them, close enough that Marcus could see Jude flinch on the couch behind him. Andre didn't back up.
"Okay." Jack's voice cut across the room before anyone else moved, tired and flat and entirely unbothered by the two men squared off three feet from him. "I need to go cook something before somebody in this room does something stupid. There is way too much hangry in here for one night."
Nobody laughed. But Zain's shoulders dropped half an inch, and that was enough to defuse the worst of this bullshit.
"This isn't over," Zain said, stepping back first.
"It is for tonight," Marcus said. "Go upstairs, Zain. Take Seth with you."
Zain looked at him a second longer than the instruction needed, and Marcus wondered if his friend would refuse, then turned and left without another word.
Seth followed, one hand finding the small of his back on the way out, the kind of touch that wasn't asking permission so much as reminding him someone was there.
Thank every damned star for Seth. A year ago Zain would have drawn a gun on Andre, and Marcus wasn't sure where he would have stood on that one. Which was its own problem, wasn't it?
Nate scooped Jude up in his arms bridal style, the slight singer making a surprised eep sounds as his arms flew around his boyfriend's neck.
"I'm taking Jude to our room upstairs too.
He doesn't need this alpha male shit to deal with on top of what happened.
" He leaned to call through the doorway at Jack to bring their food up and Nate would be grateful before he gave them all one last, long look and retreated into the homey levels of the safehouse with his man.
Marcus walked Andre to the door himself, past the kitchen where Jack was already banging pots around with more force than cooking strictly required.
They stopped at the threshold. Neither of them reached for the handle.
Andre swallowed, hard enough that Marcus watched his throat move, and threaded their fingers together instead. "Promise me you'll be careful."
"I promise." Marcus tightened his grip around Andre's hand. "You too. Same promise."
"I promise."
Marcus held on a second longer than the exchange required. "There's a room upstairs. It's yours if you want it. Tonight, or any night."
Andre's eyes went to the stairs behind Marcus's shoulder, then back to his face. He didn't answer right away.
"I can't. Not… yet." His grip on Marcus's fingers didn't loosen even as he said it. "I don't know what this is yet, or what I'm ready for. But I'm done pretending my life's been fine without you in it. It hasn't. It's been quiet in a way I called peaceful because that was easier than the truth."
Marcus didn't have an answer that wouldn't have asked for more than Andre had just offered, so he didn't try to find one.
They didn't kiss. Andre's thumb moved once across Marcus's knuckles, slow, like he was memorizing the shape of them before he let go, and then he did, and stepped back, and opened the door himself.
"Lock this behind me," Andre said.
"Always do."
Andre held his eyes a moment longer than a goodbye needed, then walked out into the dark without looking back. Marcus watched until the car pulled away before he locked the door.
Hours later, because there was no way Marcus was going to sleep after what had happened, he went back to his office and opened the message Ghost had left waiting for him. No subject line. Timestamped less than an hour ago.
Not a case file. Not a lead. A list of names, and beside each one, a second name Marcus had never seen before.
MARCUS -> DANIEL REYNOLDS. Birth certificate, SSN, twelve years of tax history, Petoskey.
ZAIN -> JAMES AL SAYED. Eight years of tax history, Traverse City.
NATE -> a name and a city, same format, same weight.
ELIJAH -> the same.
JACK -> the same.
Then, further down, three more names that hadn't been there a year ago, added in a different font like an afterthought that wasn't actually an afterthought at all: Seth. Trip. Jude.
And under all of it, one line with no second name attached to it yet:
ANDRE JEFFERSON: building his now. Done by dawn.
Marcus read the whole thing twice, his eyes tracing the lines of code and documentation until the reality of it finally broke through his disbelief.
The screen glowed with the evidence of Ghost’s meticulous work, forged identities, financial trails worn smooth with use, histories layered like sedimentary rock over what must have been months of careful, unseen labor.
Whole lives, backstopped and aged and ready to step into the second any of them needed to disappear.
Nobody had asked him to. Nobody had even known to ask.
And somewhere in the last few hours, between a photograph and a room full of people trying not to fall apart, Ghost had sat down at a keyboard, his shoulders hunched in concentration, and prepared for deployment of his master plan.
Now a fourth identity was materializing, scheduled to arrive before sunrise, because Ghost had apparently decided Andre belonged on a list meant for the people Marcus couldn’t survive losing.
Marcus felt two things at once, and neither one canceled the other out.
There was the fullness of it… this was simply how Ghost loved people, completely, in ways that took a year and never once asked for credit.
And underneath that, closer to grief, there was a hard understanding: Ghost had been carrying all of it alone the entire time, doing that math in private so nobody else had to.
The weight of it showed in the slight tremor in Ghost’s hands sometimes, in the way he’d rub his eyes after too many hours at the screen.
Except he wasn’t quite alone in it anymore. Trip was down the hall right now, probably still awake like everyone else in this house tonight, the floorboards creaking under his restless pacing.
Marcus typed back three words and sent them.
Thank you. Always.