Chapter 28 Phoenix #2
He presses his lips tight together for a moment. “And if the test comes back with an answer you don’t like?”
I want to say it won’t. I want to say it will. Both are lies until a lab tech prints a sheet with the answers on it. I set my palms on the table and feel the wood. It’s solid and nicked and real.
“Well…I never planned to marry a last name for the money it brings,” I say.
“I will not let a piece of shit decide how we speak about each other in rooms that matter. I will not be a secret, and I will not let anyone make me into a symbol that excuses their bad behavior. If the result says I’m a Masterson, I will turn that name into policy, and a charity line item and a five-year plan.
If it says I’m not, we will eat celebratory cake and get back to work. Either way, I’m going home.”
He grins. It changes his whole face. “That sounds like a good plan.”
I don’t get to put on a brave face for very long.
The tears are slower than I expect, like my body doesn’t want to waste the water on a possibility instead of a certainty.
They come anyway, hot and surprised, and I put my head in my hands because there’s something undignified about crying upright.
Zeus noses my shin and then leans the full, stupid weight of his head on my foot.
Spencer slides a box of tissues across the table without commentary and looks out the window until I’m finished.
When I am, he speaks like we’re reading from a list of tasks that need to be done.
“Here is what happens next,” he says. “We stay dark for twenty-four hours. The lab calls me as soon as they have anything worth hearing. You do not get ambushed by a ringtone or by one of your men trying to be with you. When we have that, we decide the order of operations. If it’s the worst version, we talk to an attorney before we talk to your boys so we know exactly what landmines exist that are legal and not emotional.
If it’s the other version, we call your boys and tell them to stop bleeding in the war room and get the house ready for you to come back and terrify everyone. ”
“I don’t terrify everyone,” I say, sniffling.
“You terrify men who should be terrified,” he says, amused. “Which is good.”
Jace pops his head in with a knock like a courtesy.
“Perimeter’s clean. I’ll rotate with Ortiz at two.
Got you the caffeine you like,” he adds to me, setting a bottled cold brew on the counter.
He hesitates. “We’re with you, Ms. Jones.
If that’s not forward. It’s easy to cut a paycheck and demand loyalty. But you… You take care of your people.”
“It’s forward,” I say, touched. “And absolutely perfect. Thank you.”
“We signed up to work for a queen,” he says, like it’s just a fact he kept in his pocket until now. “Kings are fine. But they always make it about them, little punks.”
I laugh, an actual sound. “You’re not wrong.”
He tips two fingers and disappears.
“Does everyone think I’m a monarch?” I ask Spencer.
“They think you’re a center of gravity,” he says. “They’re not wrong either.”
The afternoon moves on to small tasks. Spencer writes down a list of things he wants me to consider not because they’re rules but because they’re the kind of anchors you want in place before the boat takes on speed again.
Who on staff is vulnerable. Which vendors he knows to be dirty.
Two names at the DA’s office with spines that I can use.
Three judges who don’t like theater and will be likely allies in the upcoming shitstorm.
The house lawyer who should be fired as soon as there’s a ladder built under the new one because he’s going to feed information to the old guard.
I draft the escort and lighting policy language and send it to the anonymous email Atticus will be refreshing like it owes him money if I know him at all.
Once I’m done with that, I rework the housekeeping route structure.
I put together a preliminary memo to the staff that doesn’t use the word “trafficking” because they already know the word. Instead, it uses “safety” and “dignity” and “we saw you” and “we will not let this happen again.”
By evening, the light in the little house turns the color of tea.
Spencer grills chicken on a rickety Weber like he’s happy with cheap meat and a fight worth having.
I sit on the porch steps with my plate and let the night come in layers.
Jace eats standing, back to the railing, eyes on the road.
Ortiz eats on the hood of his car and tells Zeus he’s a handsome boy.
Zeus agrees with every bite of chicken Ortiz tosses.
The burner rings at nine. Spencer answers with a neutral “Yes.”
He listens. He asks two questions that I don’t have time to process. He says “thank you” and hangs up and looks at me. He won’t make drama where there isn’t any. He won’t soften what matters either.
“Prelim says no match,” he says. “You are Masterson’s daughter, but there aren’t enough markers to make the worst version possible. The twenty-four-hour will confirm or correct. But the fast read says he was playing a game, because you and Conrad are not related.”
The air comes back into my body like I’ve been underwater and didn’t notice. I close my eyes and let myself sway once. Spencer is a wall without moving.
“Thank you,” I say, voice thin.
The truth is hitting me in waves. I don’t want to think about what this means. I’m Masterson’s daughter. Conrad is not my half-brother.
That means…Conrad is not Masterson’s son.
He can’t know. It’ll crush him.
“Don’t thank me,” Spencer is saying. “Don’t thank a test. Use it to your advantage.”
I wipe my face with the back of my wrist and stand. The relief doesn’t solve all of it—there’s still a man with a clean pair of shoes who thinks he knows how to reach into our house and pull what he wants out—but the worst version is losing oxygen. I can breathe enough to be decisive.
“I’m going back to the Titan-Wynn,” I say.
“I know,” he says. “We leave at six a.m. Quietly book a room under another name and stay under the radar that way. We don’t want Collier sending anyone after you to the penthouse.”
“I want the guys with us,” I add. “And whoever built the rumor that the Queen has her own guard can keep it up.”
He salutes me with a grilling fork. “As you wish.”
I go inside and stand in the bedroom doorway and look at my bag like it might scold me for packing fast. Zeus watches me and thumps his tail.
I kneel and put my forehead to his and whisper, “We’re going home,” and he wiggles like he understands the word even if he doesn’t care where home is as long as I’m there.
When I come back to the kitchen, Spencer is washing the two plates like he’ll be graded on the streaks. He glances at me and then at the little black phone on the counter.
“You could call them,” he says. “It would be kind.”
“I know,” I say, and my throat closes for one second. “I will, eventually. But I need time to figure out how to handle them, this, everything.”
He dries his hands and hands me the towel like it’s a baton. “Then we’ll set the stage.”
“What if they don’t like my approach?” I ask, only half joking.
“Then they’re not the men you love, and they don’t know you as well as they think they do,” he says, and somehow that unsticks something in my chest that has been lodged there since I slammed my palms against a steel door.
The house quiets. The night turns all the way dark.
Ortiz takes the first watch while Jace sleeps on the couch with the television muttering over his shoulder.
Zeus snores like a little outboard motor, happy in a place where the air tastes like trees.
I lie down on the bed and put my phone face-down on the nightstand because I trust myself not to call and ruin the entrance I want or the time I’m going to need to get it straight.
I stare at the ceiling and rehearse what I’m going to say to my people without rehearsing. The door is open for anyone who wants to leave because this is going to be loud. If you stay, you do it with your eyes open. If you think you can scare me, you didn’t read the last chapter of my book.
I fall asleep with a list in my head and wake at five without an alarm because my body has learned to tell time by trouble.
The water is hot and the coffee is strong, and Spencer is already in the driver’s seat when I climb in with Zeus and a backpack.
Ortiz is in the lead car and Jace waves us out with a thermos in his hand like a flag.
The feeder in the yard swings and a cardinal takes off and the little house is suddenly a past tense I’ll be grateful for someday.
We pull onto the road, the trees leaning over us like a tunnel. The river is to our left, going where it always goes. When the causeway rises, the city’s glow lifts over the horizon—gold and glass and southern sin.
“Ready?” Spencer asks, not looking away from the road.
“Yes,” I say. “Let’s go home.”