6. The Cost
The Cost
Janice
Matthias’s first report arrives in three sections.
Protocol notes. Facility observations. Patient indicators.
I read them in order because order matters when the subject matter is trying very hard to split me open.
The basement ops center is quieter than Blackstone HQ but no less alert. Steve sits across from me beneath the low wash of the monitors, reviewing the institute layout Matthias sent through after his tour while Victor’s secure feed stays open on the wall screen.
Grayson and Felicity are remote from one of their apartments, pulling metadata from the packet while I try not to imagine the cable situation. Mercy has already uploaded Bliss’s family timeline into the recovery file Matthias requested before he even met her.
I focus on the medication protocol.
Benzodiazepine base. Scopolamine derivative. Proprietary compound. Timed dosing. Sleep disruption. Sensory restriction. Color removal. Guided correction when memory resurfaces.
Clinical language. Clean headings. Controlled terminology.
My brain does what it’s trained to do. It sorts dosage windows, drug interactions, withdrawal risks, hydration concerns, adverse reactions, and the danger of removing suppression too fast. I make notes in the margins.
I flag three concerns. I add a question about seizure threshold and another about tapering schedules if Bliss has been on the proprietary compound for six weeks.
Professional. Useful. Focused.
Then I read the conditioning section.
Patient discouraged from trusting independent recall.
Family memory reframed as trauma distortion.
Creative identity categorized as overstimulation.
Color response suppressed through environmental control.
I stare at that line for too long.
Color response suppressed.
As if color is a symptom. As if a woman’s connection to the thing that makes her herself can be categorized, medicated, and dimmed until she’s easier to manage.
I write another note.
Need pre-admission medication history.
My handwriting stays neat.
That feels like a small victory or a terrible one. I can’t tell which.
Steve glances over once. He doesn’t interrupt. He knows my working face too well, the one I put on when there’s blood, trauma, pain, and no space for what any of it costs.
I keep reading.
Matthias’s observations are precise but not detached. He noted Bliss’s blue paint residue under one thumbnail. He noted her delayed recognition response when she saw him. He noted that Dr. Strauss mislabeled her reaction as associative confusion.
Then I read the sentence twice.
Her mind reached for a connection Meridian didn’t give her permission to keep.
The words blur.
I blink them clear, close the file, and stand.
“Bathroom,” I say, because it’s a normal word and normal words can carry you out of a room if you use them at the right time.
Steve looks up. He starts to move, then stops when I give the smallest shake of my head.
Not yet.
The short hallway outside the ops center is empty. The basement bathroom is colder than the rest of the house, all tile, mirrors, and unforgiving light. I lock the door and press both hands against it.
No sound comes at first.
Then it does.
Quiet. Ugly. Mine.
I cry for Bliss Fontaine, who painted blue like contraband.
I cry for every woman Meridian has taught to distrust her own mind.
I cry because I know how to treat wounds, infections, fractures, shock, and dehydration, but there isn’t a clean dressing for someone else reaching inside a person and rearranging the places where memory lives.
When it passes, I wash my face with cold water until the mirror gives me back someone who can walk into the room again.
My eyes are red.
Fine. Let them be red.
I dry my hands, straighten my shoulders, and unlock the door.
Bliss is still inside that place.
So, I’m not finished.
Hollands Residence, Pacific Heights, San Francisco. 1915 hours
Steve finds me before I make it back to the ops center.
Naturally.
He’s waiting in the short hallway outside the bathroom, one shoulder against the wall, sleeves pushed up, barefoot.
He doesn’t crowd me. He doesn’t talk through the door.
He simply stands there, close enough that I know he came after me, far enough that I can still choose whether to cross the space between us.
I cross it.
His expression changes when he sees my face, but he doesn’t say anything. That might be what undoes me most. No questions. No careful nurse voice turned back on me. No demand to explain the red eyes or the water still clinging to my lashes.
Just Steve, caring.
He steps forward and opens his arms.
I go into them because I don’t have enough left in me to pretend I don’t need to.
He holds me with both arms, firm and balanced, one hand spread between my shoulder blades, the other at the back of my head. His cheek rests against my hair.
The hallway is peaceful around us, the familiar glow of the ops center at our backs. For a little while, the world can wait.
“They take everything,” I whisper.
His arms tighten slightly.
“Every memory. Every feeling. Every color. They take who you are.”
Steve doesn’t answer straight away. He waits until my words have somewhere to settle, until the worst of the shaking passes and I can breathe without fighting for it.
Then he says, low against my hair, “And we give it back.”
I close my eyes.
The words aren’t comfort in the easy sense. They don’t soften the report sitting open on my desk or change the fact that Bliss Fontaine is still locked inside a place designed to teach her that grey is safety and being herself is a symptom.
But they give the pain direction.
Steve has always understood that better than most people. You don’t make the horror smaller by naming it gently. You don’t fix a wound by looking away from it. You stand there, you hold pressure where it’s needed, and you keep your hands steady until the bleeding slows enough for the next step.
I draw in a breath against his shirt. “I hate this one.”
“I know, love.”
“I hate all of them, but this one…” I stop, because I don’t have a simple ending for the sentence.
His hand moves slowly over my hair. “Yeah.”
That’s enough.
I stay there another few seconds, borrowing the hushed strength of the man who knows when to speak and when to become a wall between me and the world.
Then I step back, wipe my face with my fingers, and look toward the basement stairs.
Steve studies me. “You ready?”
No.
“Yes.”
His mouth curves, faint and sad. “That’s my girl.”
I take his hand.
Together, we go back to the room where the fight is waiting.
Hollands Residence, Pacific Heights, San Francisco. 1930 hours
Action is easier than helplessness.
That probably says something about me I don’t have time to examine.
Back in the basement ops center, I sit at my desk with Matthias’s report open on one screen and pharmaceutical supply records on another. Steve stays close, not hovering, just there, his chair angled toward mine while Victor’s secure feed glows on the wall screen.
I can still feel the bathroom tile beneath my palms. I can still hear myself saying they take everything.
So, I give my hands something useful to do.
Elizabeth Holt’s name appears in Matthias’s notes three times. Pharmaceutical executive. Procurement access. Trial oversight. Probable supplier for Strauss’s proprietary compounds.
Probable isn’t enough.
I start with licensing records, clinical trial registries, procurement channels, and subsidiaries with names designed to make eyes slide away.
Meridian doesn’t buy the ugly things directly.
Of course it doesn’t. It uses research affiliates, psychiatric innovation grants, neurotherapeutic partnerships, and enough corporate nesting dolls to make a Russian grandmother proud.
Steve reads over my shoulder. “That’s a lot of companies for one drug.”
“That’s the point. Spread the liability until no one owns the harm.”
Victor’s voice comes through the speaker. “Send me the subsidiary names.”
I do.
Felicity and Grayson are already on the shared screen, remote from one of their apartments, pulling filings faster than I can open them.
Grayson mutters something about shell-company hygiene being emotionally embarrassing.
Felicity tells him to stop flirting with the fraud structure and keep digging.
Under different circumstances, I’d smile.
Tonight, I just keep tracing.
Elizabeth Holt sits on the board of a company called NeuroVance Therapeutics. NeuroVance owns a smaller research entity. That entity licenses compounds from a private pharmaceutical holding company with a clean Delaware registration and a name that almost makes me miss it.
Rothman Biomedical Group.
I stop typing.
Steve notices immediately. “Jan.”
I don’t answer. I pull the record closer, check the ownership documents, then the annual reports, then the executive biographies. My stomach turns cold in a way tears couldn’t touch.
Alexander Rothman.
The man who drugged Destiny Marino before HAVEN existed, turned a dating service into a selection trap, and is currently being held at the Marin safe house because he still knows things we need.
And because none of us are inclined to let him do it again.
His family owns the company feeding experimental drugs into Meridian Memory Institute. Why am I not surprised?
Victor goes very still on the screen.
Steve leans in, jaw set. “You’re sure?”
“No.” I open one more filing, follow the ownership chain through two trusts and a family office, then land on the signature block at the bottom of a licensing agreement. “Now I’m sure.” For a second, the name on the screen eclipses everything else.
Rothman isn’t just connected to the first Meridian front. His family money is helping power this one. Different packaging. Same disease.
I send the file to Victor, Mercy, Felicity, and Grayson.
“They’re not separate operations,” I say. “Matchmaking, memory treatment, pharmaceuticals, all of it ties back through the same families.”
Victor’s voice is quiet. “Legacy.”
“Yes.”
Steve’s hand settles over mine, warm and steady.
I look at the name on the screen.
Alexander Rothman.
Held in our safe house.
Still breathing.
Still useful.
“Then I think it’s time,” I say, “we ask our prisoner what else his family has been selling.”
Steve looks at me.
“And this time,” I add, keeping my gaze on Rothman’s name, “I want to be in the room when he answers.”
Hollands Residence, Pacific Heights, San Francisco. 2200 hours
I stare at the name on my monitor until the letters stop looking like a surname and start looking like history.
Rothman.
It was never just Alexander.
His family built the pharmaceutical empire. They funded the research. They supplied the compounds now being pumped into women like Bliss under the language of treatment.
The circle closes.
It doesn’t feel satisfying.
It feels enormous.
Steve reaches across the desk and gently lowers the lid of my laptop.
“Enough for tonight, love.”
I glance toward the wall of monitors. Victor has already signed off. Grayson and Felicity’s connection disappeared twenty minutes ago. Mercy’s final update sits inside the recovery file, neat and thorough, because that’s how she rolls. The work will still be there in the morning.
So will Rothman.
I nod, too tired to argue.
We climb the stairs together, leaving the soft pulse of the servers beneath the house.
Upstairs, the rooms feel warmer, softer, deliberately ordinary.
A lamp glows beside our bed. Faris is already asleep in his little sleeping bag, completely unconcerned with international conspiracies and pharmaceutical dynasties.
Lucky Slinky.
I stop beside the bed, arms folded around myself, but not because I’m cold. Not really.
Steve stands behind me for a few seconds before his hands settle lightly on my shoulders.
“They’re stealing people from inside their own minds,” I say.
“I know.”
“They’re making women forget who they are.”
His thumbs move slowly against my shoulders. “And we’re going to help them remember.”
I close my eyes.
“I need to remember too.”
Steve turns me gently to face him. There’s no heat in his expression yet, no demand, no assumption. Just the man who has learned every version of me and still looks as though he’d choose each one again.
“You’re Janice Hollands,” he says softly. “Nurse practitioner. Joint HAVEN operations lead and medical lead. Terrifying with a Glock. Worse with pressure points or a spreadsheet.”
A small laugh escapes before I can stop it.
“There she is,” he says.
Then he kisses me, slow and unhurried, and the day begins to loosen its grip.
He undresses me like he’s taking care, not taking over.
Like every button, every breath, every inch of skin is part of something I still own.
He reminds me of my clever hands, my stubborn heart, the way I smile when I’ve solved a problem, the fierce compassion that won’t let me look away when other people are hurting.
“You belong to yourself,” he whispers.
We slip into bed together, shedding the last of our clothes, and turn to face each other. Being side by side with him like this is a sanctuary. We slide closer, our skin touching from chest to toe, and begin to kiss, slow at first, then with growing hunger.
Our hands find each other in the dark. I reach down between us, my fingers wrapping around his thick, hard, velvety length, feeling him pulse beneath my touch. Steve groans against my mouth, his own hands moving in long, possessive strokes over my body.
He brushes his thumbs over my breasts, gently teasing my nipples until they tighten before lowering his head to take one into his mouth. The warm pull sends a sharp jolt of pleasure straight to my core.
He rolls onto his back, bringing me with him until I’m poised above his lap.
I guide his heavy cock to my entrance and slowly lower myself onto him, taking him inch by inch until he’s buried deep inside me.
I begin to move, riding him slowly at first, savoring the raw fullness of him before the rhythm builds between us.
The friction gathers quickly. My hips move faster as he grips them, steadying me while matching every motion. Pleasure winds tighter and tighter until, with a breathless gasp, I come around him, wet and hard, my muscles clamping around his length as his name breaks from my lips.
Before the tremors have faded, Steve rolls me onto my back and takes over.
He pins my wrists gently but firmly against the mattress and drives into me with deep, relentless thrusts.
The powerful rhythm carries us both toward the edge, each movement stripping away another piece of the day until nothing exists except him, me, and the connection between us.
He brings me apart again in hard, pulsing waves just as he groans and comes with me.
Later, lying safely in his arms, I think about Bliss again.
They steal women by making them forget who they are.
Tonight Steve reminded me of every single thing I am.
There isn’t a part of me Meridian could take that he wouldn’t help me find again.