Chapter 25 - Atticus
Atticus
This fucking ghost. He’s got us over a digital barrel, and he knows it.
Biting a low curse through my teeth as I hit yet another wall, I rip off my headset, sick of the ADHD tones I’ve been listening to all day, and pitch it across the room.
It's the only reason I hear my phone buzz with a text.
Conrad
Office. Now. Get eyes on Phoenix; make sure she stays upstairs. I want her locked in the penthouse with Zeus.
What the hell is it now? I don’t have time for a fucking meeting of the minds every time I turn around.
I shove back from my desk hard enough that the chair skitters and squeals across the floor, yanking my glasses off my face and rubbing at my eye sockets with the heels of my hands.
It’s still early—only eleven or so—but I’ve been awake since…well, I don’t think I actually went to bed. This day should have been over long ago. My eyes burn, and the coffee beside my keyboard went cold hours ago.
I’m fucking tapped. I’ve been scrubbing CCTV timelines until the pixels swim—elevators, stairwells, back-of-house corridors—looking not only at footage but at miles of code, trying to hunt down the ghost in my systems.
My body aches from sitting in that chair, and my wrists and fingers ache from the keyboard work. I shake my hands out now as I walk down to the office, choosing the stairwells over the elevator to get a few steps in. I don’t bother answering the text. There’s no need.
The resort hums with life as I walk out onto the floor Con’s office is located on—people chatting on the way to their rooms, a housekeeping cart with a squeaky wheel being pushed to the next room.
I clip past it all, jaw clenched, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves shoved to my forearms because I can’t be bothered to look like the calm, in control one today.
Conrad’s office door is open. That detail irritates me more than it should.
“I’m going to say this once,” I tell the room as I cross the threshold, “if this isn’t life-or-death, I’m walking back out. I can’t find where the drugs are coming from if I’m in a meeting every five minutes. Unless one of you figured out how to code in the last twenty minutes—”
Then I actually look at the other Titans, and I can see it painted all over them.
Maverick’s pacing a tight line by the windows like a caged lion, his hands running through his hair and making it look more like a mane.
Storm’s wedged against a bookcase, arms folded, expression carved from stone. He’s on the edge. He’s kind of always on the fucking edge, but whatever’s happening right now is bad enough that Conrad is keeping Phoenix in the suite instead of helping Storm stay present.
Conrad is leaning against the front edge of his father’s desk, his palms planted, that CEO mask welded to his face. The one that shows no emotion, the one he never wears when it’s just us.
Whatever is going on, it’s worse than life or death. Somewhere behind my sternum, something tightens.
“Sit,” Conrad says.
“No.” I shut the door with my heel. “Standing is faster. The second we’re done, I’m going back to the feeds. Somebody is moving product inside our walls, which, by the way, the Blackvine Syndicate apparently thinks we stole from them, so unless this is that, save it.”
That name buys me three seconds of silence. I spend the time wiping a smudge off my lenses and reminding myself not to throw something.
“How do you know that?” Con asks.
“Because they sent me an e-mail saying they would be in touch soon, and giving me a list of what they expect returned along with the cash expected for the inconvenience. Apparently, they are under the impression I handle the books.”
“Fuck me,” Maverick starts. “Could they be behind all of this?”
“Maybe,” I say. “They have the resources. But would they really give us a heads up that they’re going to start a war?”
“It’s not them,” Conrad says. “They called. Whoever stole from them is working very hard to make Calhoun think we are at fault.”
Son of a bitch.
“Blackvine Syndicate isn’t a street crew. They’re inter-state, arguably international when they want to be, built on old money that found newer markets. They don’t tag walls, they buy them, just as quickly as they buy politicians and cops,” Conrad says, pacing.
“How do you know?”
“My father approached them years ago. They were going to make some deals, but Calhoun turned him down, said he wasn’t trustworthy.”
Maverick snorted. “The mafia thinks your father isn’t trustworthy?”
“I may have had a hand in that,” Conrad says with a shrug. “It was several years ago, and I thought it was too risky. I still do.”
Con takes the slow, straight path to the sideboard while he talks, like he needs the motion to keep from exploding. He doesn’t pour anything. He stares into the crystal, reverses direction, and keeps pacing.
“They avoid direct retail. Think wholesale plus logistics. They prefer medical-adjacent products. Less meth and coke and more pharmaceutical-grade opioids, designer benzos, knock-off Botox, and more. Anything the rich, beautiful, and greedy want to get their hands on. Their MO is to acquire at scale through theft or gray-market diversion, sit on inventory in shell-controlled warehouses, then push by proxy—contractors, not employees.”
“Contractors who look like ‘our’ staff,” Storm says flatly. “Instead of your corner pot dealer.”
“Exactly.” Conrad nods once. “They like using other people’s storefronts.
The upside for them is that if someone knocks, the storefront catches fire, not the warehouse.
The downside for us is already pretty fucking clear and why we won’t get involved with them if I have anything to do with it.
If someone plants a tip, we end up with cops like dickweed the other night and we look like the storefront. ”
“Which is why you blocked it before,” I finish for him.
“Exactly. Now someone is moving around us, we need to find out who. Especially since the deaths suggest they are cutting the drugs with something that makes them dangerous.” He pauses. “I don’t see them doing that, though. That’s not their MO.”
“Territory?” I ask, because I like maps; they help me see patterns. Maybe it can give me an idea of who they may be working with.
“They don’t care about turf wars,” Conrad says. “They care about corridors. Ports, interstates, last-mile freight routes. They’ll ride piggyback on any corridor that moves volume and use six layers of LLCs to do it. They keep themselves insulated. Nobody important handles the box.”
“Can they be reasoned with?” Maverick asks.
“I’ve never met them,” Con says, turning back, “and I don’t want to. But their reputation is intense. I don’t want to be on their radar, good or bad.”
“Jesus fuck, can this get any more complicated?” I ask.
“Yeah, it can. And it has.” Con sighs. “Mrs. Langford got some fucked up Botox in the spa. Or at least, that’s what she’s claiming. And she is making threats—cops, Page Six, and her husband and his merry band of power-tripping politician buddies making our lives hell.”
Something about that clicks, like I have all the pieces but they are not fitting together yet.
“Storm, any updates on the staff?” Mav asks. “Please, good news.”
“No, I can’t find any people with connections. I have fired people for stealing and a host of other shit that should have been cleaned up a while ago, including a janitor that hides cameras in women’s bathrooms and live streams content to the dark web. But nothing on the drugs.”
“Who all have you interviewed?” I ask.
“Pretty much everyone,” he shrugs. “Maids, janitors, wait staff, concierges, desk staff, security—”
“—the spa staff?”
“No, not yet, but the spa was closed when the OD happened. There haven't been any complaints about them, and they turn a profit on a shoestring budget.”
“What if Langford did get the bad Botox here? The Calhouns said they were missing faux-tox too, right? What if it’s the spa that is running everything?”
“Fuck,” Mav says. “How do we prove it, how do we stop it?”
“We don’t, not yet,” I say. “We need to find out if it’s the truth. We need to be able to give Calhoun more than just a theory because he’s a crazy motherfucker. We need to give him the thief. And we need to look at why we are being targeted.”
“Because we’re rich?” Mav asks.
“No, it’s more than that. I think this is retaliation for Phoenix,” I say. I have a feeling that I just can’t shake. All of this ties back to her.
“Works for me.” Conrad shrugs. “In my experience, if there’s a headache, it’s usually her fault,” Con says, and I move to take a seat.
“Could this all be blow-back for the men we put in the ground after they grabbed Phoenix?” I ask again, ignoring Conrad’s comments. Though he’s right, and we all know it.
None of us breathes for a heartbeat.
Storm answers first, voice flat. “Maybe. But the crew that touched her wasn’t Calhoun. Local idiots with a hero complex and a borrowed gun. They don’t have this kind of reach.”
“Could still be leverage,” Maverick says, knuckles white against the window frame. “Maybe whoever sent them is a bigger player than we think. Why else kill the girl and leave her in our penthouse? Someone above them wants us busy.”
Conrad nods. “Dead girls make headlines, headlines attract cops, cops waste time, our cameras go dark while we’re answering questions about Botox and assholes ODing…meanwhile they get whatever it is they are after.”
I run my tongue along the inside of my teeth to keep from swearing.
Sleep deprivation turns me into a worse version of myself, while a crisis makes me efficient.
Today I’m both. It feels like chewing glass.
To help settle myself, I press two fingers to the inside of my left wrist, counting every single pulse of my heart.
“Here’s what I know,” I say, ticking it out because lists are order. Order helps me focus. “One. My network is compromised at the wire and the process tree.”
They all stare at me—it’s fine. They don’t need to know what that means. “Two, our staff roster is far too thin from people disappearing and others being fired. And three, a syndicate with a reputation for brutality and grudges thinks we stole from them, and they’ve set a two-day clock.”
“You forgot four,” Mav says. “Parents, the press, and a senator’s wife are making everything much more complicated.”
“Okay, one problem at a time,” Con says. “First, we need to focus on the drugs and the Calhouns.”
“No,” Storm interrupts. “First, we need to bring in Phoenix. She needs to be brought up to speed. She is in this now, too, and she sees things we can’t.”
“No,” Con says. “We should get rid of her.”
We all stare at him. Storm finally speaks. “What the fuck, man?”
Con lifts his shoulder in a shrug and half-turns to look out the window.
“You know it’s the right thing to do. She’s going to leave anyway at the end of a year.
This was never a permanent thing. With everything going on, with the people involved…
this is dangerous for her. And it’s distracting for us. ”
The room is quiet for a moment. Mav runs a hand up the back of his neck and utters a low curse. “Damnit, he’s not wrong.”
“Over your dead fucking bodies,” Storm warns.
I look from him to Con. Con is staring out the window. Storm looks, for the first time in as long as I’ve known him, as though he’d like to throw his knife at him. My vote is simple.
“Ahh…I think we should bring her in.” I say.
“She’s smart, and her experience as an employee at the hotel means she knows things we don’t.
And I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but she’s also keeping something from us.
It may be nothing, but it may be what we need to figure all this shit out. I say we…extract…answers.”
“No majority,” Con says, his shoulders slumping with…relief? Whatever it is, it’s final. We act only when there is a clear majority. We’re tied now, so Phoenix stays.
Maverick hums. “Maybe if we tell her what we know, she will share whatever it is she’s holding back.”
“You see it, too?” Storm asks, and I nod.
“Yeah, she’s been acting a little weird. I think she knows something she hasn’t told us yet.”
Conrad stiffens. “Like what?”
“I don’t know. Which is the problem.” I run a hand through my hair again and stare at the brass continents on the black globe in the bookshelf.
“She’s not stupid. She’s not reckless. If she’s holding on to it, it’s either because she thinks doing so will protect us or because she doesn’t trust us with whatever it is. ”
Conrad doesn’t argue. That’s as close as he’ll get to agreeing.
“Fine,” he says. “We’ll keep her for now. But she’s not one of us. I think you all need to remember that this is temporary. Anything else before we break?”
“I’ll get the CCTV from the spa. If it’s been erased, I’ll start double-checking the background for every employee there. There has to be something there. We’ve looked everywhere else.”
Con nods and I turn to leave.
I hesitate. Then I say the thing out loud so it can stop clawing at me from the inside. “We killed men for Phoenix. If this is the bill, it’s not just about drugs. It’s about making us choose: her or the house.”
Maverick swears, the sound quiet and broken. Storm’s fingers uncurl, then curl again. Conrad’s face doesn’t move. He doesn’t need to say the choice; it’s tattooed on all of us.
“This house is just bricks and mortar,” Storm says finally. “She breathes and bleeds.”
He’s right, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to choose her, and neither will Conrad. After all, when she had the chance years ago, she didn’t choose us.