Chapter 29 Maverick #2
“I,” he continues, “am a Carrow. No shock there. Pretty sure we could use the family resemblance as a legal document.”
Storm’s mouth tilts. The line of his shoulders eases a millimeter. Even he wanted the science to say the world he knows is the one he lives in, as shitty as it is.
I take a breath as he continues. “Unfortunately, Atticus is ninety-nine point nine percent the child of the Vales. Which is a rude thing to read at three a.m., but here we are.”
Atticus nods, lips twisting. Storm glances at Conrad.
“Phoenix,” he says clearly. “She is a Masterson.”
The glass in Con’s hand doesn’t break. His face doesn’t change. A smaller man would go theatrical. Conrad goes still. The quiet gets so loud I can hear the condenser click in the built-in beverage fridge.
“But you?” he adds, because Storm’s knife has two edges. “You’re not. You’re not your father’s child. Nor are you related to Phoenix in any way.”
The tumbler in his hand tilts, and I take it from his hand, setting it on the table. For a second he looks at his hand, like it’s an object someone left attached to him by accident.
“Run that by me again,” he says, voice low.
“We did,” Storm answers. “Spencer’s lab and a second out-of-state reference. Chain of custody is clean. Markers don’t lie.”
His laugh is small and wrong. “He would hate that.”
“If what you said is true, he’s in a position to have an opinion about water temperature and not much else,” I say beneath my breath.
Atticus swears and drags his palms down his face. “Your mother,” he says, to Conrad. “She—”
“—vanished,” I finish. “And now we know why.”
Conrad leans forward, forearms on his knees, big hands hanging loose, head bowed like a man at a baptism who can’t decide if he wants to be saved or if he’d rather just go to hell.
Rage is there; I can see it building, a clean, hot line starting at the base of his skull.
It’s the kind that will burn something if we don’t put it to work.
“Say it,” he tells me without looking up. “All of it.”
“Phoenix is his,” I repeat, because breaking a thing requires precision and he asked for it.
“You’re not. That makes her his by blood and not yours, and you—” I let the sentence bend, then snap it into the shape I want.
“—you are ours by everything that matters. It also means the day he weaponized her against you, he did it because it was the most efficient way to hurt two people he didn’t own in any sense at all. ”
Conrad lifts his head. His eyes are dry and bright, clear as a blade under good light. “It doesn’t make her less than anything she’s always been.”
“She’s always been ours,” Storm says.
Conrad nods once. The truth lines up behind his teeth. “She’s always been one of us,” he corrects. “It just took me too long to say it out loud.”
Atticus’s mouth does a pained half-smile. “You’re getting better at it.”
“I’m learning,” Conrad says.
We sit with it for a beat—what was stolen, what wasn’t, what this does to the map we’ve been drawing since we were boys. My skin itches to move us forward. Mourning is a luxury we can steal in five-minute increments and nowhere else.
“Now we find her,” I say. “We do it clean. We do it fast. We do it without scaring her into running again.”
Conrad blows out a long breath. “Where is she?”
I grip the back of the chair to keep from pacing. “We can’t find her. Not now. You’re the only one with her location.”
He studies me with the same expression he used to save a fight for later. Then he reaches for his phone that is thankfully finished updating.
The app opens to four camera tiles, then a map. He flicks, full-screening the map. A small blue dot glows over a familiar block of glass and gold.
The Titan-Wynn.
Atticus leans forward until his glasses slide down his nose. “Are you fucking serious?” He pulls out his tablet and hits a few buttons. “She walked in through the front doors at seven,” Atticus says, calm now that he has facts to hold. “Booked a suite under her name. The front desk didn’t blink.”
“They wouldn’t,” I say. “She saves them. Gives them more of her time and attention. More than we do.” It isn’t false modesty. It’s a ledger entry. They trust who shows up in their language. Loyalty we can’t buy, and wouldn’t try to take away from her.
Atticus zooms the map a hair. The dot sits at the lobby’s breastbone.
“She’s been on property all day,” he adds.
“She sent four memos to front office staff from a house account and one to housekeeping that made Rosa cry in a good way.” He flicks the screen on the tablet.
A camera tile expands—lobby, south angle.
For a second it’s just guests and staff and water and light.
Then she steps into frame like the building has been holding its breath, just waiting for permission.
Phoenix.
She’s in flats and a simple dress that moves when she does, hair up in a knot that dares the day to try her.
Zeus heel-walks next to her, tail confident, leg still bandaged but held like he doesn’t remember it.
Security shadows her without crowding. Staff straighten the second they clock her.
Phones lower. Heads lift. The room adjusts to her like a tide.
“I think it means she loves us,” Conrad says, and for a second all of us are twenty and fifteen and eight years old at once, realizing a thing we didn’t know you could say out loud.
Atticus scrubs his face again, grinning now because he can. “Or she loves the casino and we’re lucky enough to come attached to it.”
“Both can be true,” Storm says, mouth flickering. “Let’s not argue with the version that lets us keep breathing.”
I grin like a man who just remembered what winning feels like and toss the keys to Conrad. “You sober enough to drive?”
He catches the keys without looking. “I am now.”
We move—out the roll-up door, into the heat, tires biting pavement.
Atticus fires off three calls on the line that doesn’t record—manager’s desk, Kendra, poker room—no texts, nothing that leaks.
Storm reserves the service elevator and blocks two cameras not to hide us, but to re-angle the story toward brave instead of chaotic.
On the approach, I can’t help it; I look out the window and think about the waitress with the almost-Phoenix face. I feel stupid and lucky at the same time.
“I couldn’t sit there,” I say, quieter now. “Seeing her ghost every twenty feet.”
Atticus doesn’t smile, but his voice softens. “Then don’t. Stand next to the real thing.”
Storm taps my shoulder from the back. “Say it.”
“What.”
“The thing.”
I let my hands settle at ten and two and gun us through a green light like the city winked. “She’s ours.”
No one corrects me.
We hit the Wynn’s drive in record time. Valet parts like water; Herrera ghosts the front because that’s his job. Kendra will have the mic if Phoenix asks and no mic if she doesn’t. The staff has their eyes up. The lobby’s marble looks like a stage someone whispered a blessing over.
It’s time to go get our girl.