27. Eli
TWENTY-SEVEN
ELI
“Iwant you to test him.” The performance drops out of Loki’s voice entirely—and that’s somehow worse, because it means he’s serious.
“Bring him in slowly. A little at a time. See what he does with each piece. A man can want justice in the abstract and still lose his nerve the first time he’s standing over a body that isn’t a metaphor.
Before any of us put real weight on Dean McMahon, I want to know he holds it.
” He smiles again, the theatrics sliding back into place like a curtain.
“Think of it as a long interview. You’re conducting it. Report back.”
“And if he doesn’t hold it?”
“Then you’ll have found that out carefully, at low cost, instead of catastrophically at a high one.” He spreads his hands. “Either way, you’ve done me a service. Now. On to new business.”
He slides a folder across the bar. Milo grabs it first, flipping it open.
Odin takes a sip of his drink, then sets it on the bar.
“Next up is Bill Hudson. He’s forty-two, and an investment banker.
Dozens of accusations, zero charges or convictions.
The most recent victim was nineteen—an intern at his firm.
She reported it, was pressured to recant, and was terminated two weeks later for ‘performance issues.’” His voice is flat, but there’s something cold underneath.
“He’s been untouchable because of his connections. Let’s change that.”
Milo’s already scanning the file. “Married. Two kids.” He makes a face at that. “Says he’s a regular at a golf club in—Jesus, this guy’s schedule is busier than mine.” He laughs. “That wouldn’t be hard. I don’t keep a schedule.”
“Find a window,” Odin says. “Make it clean. I don’t want another Davis situation.”
“Understood.” I take the folder from Milo, already cataloging the details.
Patterns to observe. Vulnerabilities to exploit.
A man who thinks he’s untouchable is about to learn otherwise.
I hand the file off to Knox without looking at him.
He takes it, thumbing through the printed pages, and says nothing.
Odin’s phone buzzes. He glances down, a microsecond of distraction, then rises from the barstool. The rest of us instinctively straighten up, the way dogs do when the alpha walks by.
“Loki, we have to go.”
Loki sighs, getting to his feet. “No rest for the wicked.” He heads for the door, pausing in the doorway. “Toodles.” He waves, before stepping outside.
Odin lingers a beat, his gaze meeting each of us in turn. “I’ll expect a preliminary plan by next Tuesday’s meeting. No outside involvement on Hudson.”
I nod. It goes without saying that Sage doesn’t get anywhere near this.
“We’ll keep the civilian contained,” I say, and I don’t miss the way the others bristle.
Odin lifts his chin approvingly. “Right now, that girl’s a fraying thread that will unravel everything if tugged.” He pauses at the door, hand on the knob, and fixes us with his stern gaze. “Remember why you do this. It’s not about you, it’s about the survivors and those who didn’t make it.”
Then he’s gone, the door clicking shut behind him with a sound like punctuation.
The silence that follows is different from before—less tense, more exhausted. We all let out collective breaths, shoulders dropping, masks slipping just a fraction.
“Well,” Holden says, stretching his arms overhead. “That was fun. Same time next week?”
“He took it better than I expected,” Micah admits, still pulling clean glassware from the dishwasher and racking it. “I thought he’d be angrier about Sage.”
I make myself stop watching the bunch of his biceps as he moves.
“The Davis situation cost us,” I say.
The room turns to me.
“Loki just told us, in not so many words, that we’re watched. Closely. Always have been. Whatever margin we thought we had to pull people into our orbit—we don’t have it. Sage is the largest exposure this operation has ever had, and we’ve been treating her like someone we get to keep.”
“We’re keeping her?” Milo claps his hands together once, shifting gears. “Fantastic! Who’s on her tonight?”
“Eli was there, skulking around in the shadows last night,” Holden points out and I flip him off. “Maybe someone else should—”
“Me. Me! I volunteer as tribute!” Milo holds up a hand. “Tonight is our anniversary.”
“That’s not what I—” I try to start, but Micah interrupts.
“Your what?” he asks, staring at Milo.
“Our anniversary.” Milo says it like he’s explaining gravity to a toddler.
“Anniversary of what?” Holden says, with the weariness of a man who already regrets asking.
“Of the sacred evening I resolved, in my heart, to bless her with my glorious presence the following day.” Milo presses a hand to his chest. “A night of profound personal courage. I lay awake. I chose a shirt, laid out my sales pins. Rehearsed my opening line.”
“I heard you asked her opinion on squirrels,” Knox says.
“And it landed.”
Knox rolls his eyes. “She’s working till six,” he adds. “I’ll be the one walking her home.”
“Outrageous.” Milo rounds on him. “You walked her home last time. You’re hogging the kitten.”
“I’m following the roster.” Knox doesn’t look up. “It’s in the group chat. Read it. I’m getting her home from Gull’s. Holden takes over from there.”
Holden perks up. “I do?”
Knox shakes his head, clearly annoyed. “That’s what’s on the roster. I’m working here tonight. Micah is too. Eli’s at the adult learning center. You’re on her.”
Holden grins, eyes swinging to Milo. “You’re benched, bud.”
“Benched!” Milo says it like a slur. “Fine. Then I’m taking a booth and eating my body weight in pie while she falls slowly in love with me across the room. Nobody can stop that. It’s already in motion.”
“She’s probably scared of you,” Holden says.
“She’s delighted by me.”
“Doubt it,” Knox mutters.
I tune them out.
Their voices blur into background—Milo and Holden trading barbs, Knox dropping the occasional one-word verdict. I glance toward Micah, who’s laughing to himself, wiping the bar and pretending he’s above all of it.
He catches me watching and stops. Reaches under the bar. Sets something folded on the mahogany between us.
My jacket.
“Why do you have that?”
“She wanted you to have it back.” He says it carefully, watching me.
I look at it sitting there. Worn leather, soft at the cuffs, the thing I draped over her shoulders in the park a lifetime ago and let her keep because I’m not as strong as I pretend.
I should leave it where it is.
I pick it up instead.
And that’s the mistake, because the second it’s in my hands I bring it to my face like an idiot.
It smells like her now. Her shampoo, her skin, the cheap vanilla thing she dabs behind her ears.
I gave her something of mine and she’s handed me back something entirely her, and the wanting that comes up out of me is so total, so far past anything I have a category for, that for one second I can’t breathe around it.
I want to put it on. I want to walk it back to her and not say a word and let her see my face when I do. I want to climb inside the version of my life where that’s a thing I’m allowed.
Which is exactly why I set it back down on the bar.
“Tell her I don’t need it back.”
The silence that follows is different from the others. Heavier. I can feel all of them looking at me—Milo’s sharp curiosity, Holden’s raised brow, Knox’s unreadable stillness. Micah, gone completely still.
I grab my bag and head for the door.
“Eli—” Milo starts.
“Send me the Hudson file. I’ll make a start on planning.”
I push through the door and keep walking.
No matter how impressive the inside of a building is, the alleys are all the same. This one smells like garbage and rain. I lean against the brick and press the heels of my hands into my eyes until I see stars.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Count to ten.
The door opens behind me. I don’t have to look to know who it is.
“Go back inside, Micah.”
“No.”
Quiet footsteps on wet concrete. He stops a few feet off. He’s got the jacket in his hand, like he knew I’d want it back the second I was too far away to take it without anyone watching.
“Have you talked to her?” he asks. “Since last Monday?”
The question tightens my stomach. “That’s none of your business.”
“Fuck you, I’m making it my business.” His voice comes out steady but wired tight. “I saw your face, Eli. With this.” He lifts the jacket. “And in that room eight days ago. That’s not the face of a man who doesn’t care.”
“I never said I don’t care.”
“Then what is it? You care from a safe distance? You care in the ways that don’t cost you anything?” He shakes his head. “You want her. Just fucking say it.”
The words hit bone.
Not just her.
I shove the thought down before it can finish. He’s closer now, chin lifted, those ridiculous blue-gray eyes locked on mine.
“I know it’s her you’re tearing yourself up over,” he says. “Because you sure as hell won’t let it be me.”
The world goes to a pinpoint.
“I never said that either.”
“You don’t have to. It’s clear as fucking day.” His jaw works. “So which is it? You pissed at me for putting my hand on her? Or at yourself for what you felt watching me do it?”
Something in me snaps loose.
I move before I’ve decided to. One hand fisting in his shirt, hauling him in, my mouth already going for his—because it’s the oldest exit I have, the one road out of this that’s always been open.
When the want gets too big to hold, Micah’s the place I put it down.
Heat instead of words. His mouth instead of the truth.
He lets me get close enough to feel his breath.
Then both hands hit my chest and shove, hard, and I stumble back into the brick.
“No.” His chest is heaving. His eyes wet and furious. “Not this time.”
“Micah—”
“You don’t get to do that.” His voice cracks down the middle and he doesn’t try to hide it.
“You don’t get to blow your whole life up and then use my mouth to feel better about it.
I’m not your pressure valve, Eli. I’m not the thing you reach for when it all gets too loud and then walk past at the bar like furniture for another two months.
” He drags a breath. “I’ve done that. I’ve been that. For years. I’m done.”
I stand against the wall with copper on my tongue and nothing to say, because every word of it is true.
“I want her. I want her so bad I can’t see straight.” His voice steadies, and that’s worse. “And I’d want this—you, me, all of it—if you ever once let yourself reach for the actual thing instead of the version you can have in the dark and pretend didn’t happen.”
I bite down until I taste more copper. He’s right.
He’s always right, and I hate him for it—for cutting through every story I tell myself, every careful category, every line of moral algebra, straight to the root: I want.
I want, and I hate that I want, and I want more than a man like me gets to keep.
“It’s complicated,” I say. The coward’s word, and we both know it.
“It’s really not.” He’s not stepping toward me now.
That’s the part that guts me—he’s keeping the distance himself.
“Everyone keeps treating her like a prize to split up, and she’s not, she’s a person.
But you don’t get to punish me for being the one who showed up when she needed someone.
And you don’t get to make some noble little exit and call the wall you’re hiding behind a sacrifice. ”
“You don’t know what I’m doing.”
“I know exactly what you’re doing. You’re scared, so you’re calling it strength.” He shakes his head. “You did it in the stairwell. You did it just now with this jacket. You feel the thing—and then you leave. You always leave.”
“Someone has to be the one who—”
“Who what? Suffers? Holds it together? Stays above it?” His voice drops. “You’re not above it. You’re in it. Same as me. Same as all of us.”
My hands are shaking. I drive my nails into my palms until the bite pulls me back.
“If I let this happen,” I say, low, every word costing me something I won’t get back, “I don’t know how to do it halfway. I don’t know how to want her, and share her, and be okay with—” I gesture between us, at the club, at the whole impossible shape of it. “—with all of it.”
“None of us know how,” Micah says. “That’s the point. We figure it out together or not at all.”
We stare at each other. Neither of us moves.
“She asked about you,” he says, quieter. “After you left that morning. First thing out of her mouth. Not am I in trouble. Not is he angry. Just—is he okay.” He swallows. “She cares about you, Eli. The least you can do is be brave enough to try.”
The stone in my chest cracks. A fissure. Just enough to let the hurt bleed through.
“Go back inside,” I say. It comes out wrong—broken, rough, nothing like the order I meant.
He looks at me a long moment. Then he crosses the distance, and instead of shoving the jacket at me, he holds it out. Waiting for me to take it like a person instead of refuse it like a coward.
I don’t take it.
Something in his face closes.
“You’re too much of a coward to have her,” he says, “and too selfish to let her go.” He dumps the jacket at my feet. “Figure out which one you can live with.”
He goes back inside. The door slams. The alley’s quiet again—garbage and rain and the far-off hum of traffic.
I stand there a long time.
Then I kick the shit out of the trash cans.