Chapter 30 Phoenix #2
He watched my mother carry towels and bleach past rooms where men tipped and women pretended not to be afraid of them.
He let me grow up on the edge of his empire and never reached a hand out—not for love, not for money, not even for a lie that could have made my mother’s rent easier.
And when the time came, he hired men who would have traded my body for cash.
My throat works. Nothing moves behind my eyes. I’m not numb. I’m done.
“Queen?” Jace calls, steps careful in the hall like he’s approaching an injured thing. “You want me to kill the news?”
“No,” I say. “Leave it.”
“You okay?”
“Yes,” I lie, because I’m tired of hearing myself answer that question honestly.
He nods and backs away. He grew up in a house that taught him when to stay and when to disappear. It’s one of the reasons I trust him: the right kind of absence is a skill.
I sit on the edge of the bed and stroke Zeus’s ear until he sighs.
The news flips to footage of the casino—B-roll of the lobby at night, the chandelier, the fountain everyone takes photos of like they’ve never seen water before.
A voiceover talks about our “resurgence of safety measures,” which is a nice way to frame a failure and the fix it demanded.
A second piece runs below it, a ticker: Sources report former head of security Rafe Collier remains person of interest in shipping-related investigation.
Good, I think. Say his name. Make it taste like iron for whoever says it.
I should feel something else about the body.
I should feel something about Conrad, too.
About what it costs to walk off a bridge with your father’s blood on your shirt.
About the way he said “I can’t touch you without the truth between us” and then left because he didn’t trust himself not to burn the honesty down with the bed.
But what I feel is cleaner: a grateful slice of silence where his father’s voice used to live in my head. Masterson rules. Masterson ways. Masterson costs. All of it is river mud now. All of it is someone else’s problem.
I’m glad he has closure. I’m not sorry for it. This is the thing about men like Conrad—they are monuments until you put a crack in the right place. Then they’re just water and gravity, like everyone else.
My tablet chimes again.
Kendra: “Mrs. Carlisle ‘found’ her earrings in her clutch while standing at the manager’s desk. She said ‘isn’t that always the way.’ We smiled. I added her to the list.”
Phoenix: Good job, I reply. We’ll never say we told you so, but we’ll be ready next time.
Another ping.
Housekeeping: “Two new hires started this morning. One no-show. The other is good. Told her floor managers escort in pairs and to call for an escort after ten anywhere off main. She said thank you. I almost cried.”
Phoenix: I did cry. Privately. Keep going. You’re doing everything right.
A knock. Three quick, one slow. My lungs seize, then settle. Atticus taught me that pattern when we moved into the safe house; Storm and Maverick stole it like brothers steal everything that works.
Jace calls from the other side of the door, pitched low. “Phoenix? It’s Spencer.”
Relief hits me like a chair. I cross the room and open the door enough to pull him inside. He smells like clean cotton and cold air, like every sensible thing I don’t make space for until someone hands it to me.
“You look like hell,” he says, affectionate.
“You’re not wrong.”
He glances at the TV, the crawl, the river. His expression doesn’t change. He’s the only man I know who can clock a corpse and a breakfast order in the same breath and not make the second feel like a joke. “News will do what news does. Are you ready to stop hiding in plain sight?”
“I’m working,” I say, because it’s the one fig leaf I get to wear.
“You’re managing a department from a couch with a dog for an HR partner,” he says mildly. “Which is fine for a day. It’s not fine for a week.”
I rub at the back of my neck. The tracker’s insertion site is a small tender knot I keep pretending not to poke. “I haven’t decided what my entrance looks like,” I admit.
Conrad thinks that I don’t know about the tracker, but I’m not an idiot. He knows exactly how to find me when he’s ready.
Until then, I’ll wait.
“I think you have,” he says, and nods toward the hallway, toward the elevator bank, toward the lobby I can see in my mind without moving—front desk chaos at shift change, bell staff lined like soldiers, Rosa in housekeeping with a list and a look that says “don’t try me,” Valet running, Security rotating, the casino floor humming under all of it like a heartbeat.
“I think you walked in this morning without a fake name because you were already writing the speech.”
“I don’t have a speech,” I say, dry.
He raises his brows.
“Okay, I have an outline that I can work from.”
“Then we give you a room where outlines turn into orders.”
I look down at Zeus. He stretches, casts a doubtful eye toward the leash he hates, and then thumps his tail in surrender. Traitor. I clip him in anyway.
Jace moves to the peephole and checks the hall. “Clear,” he says. “Cal’s on the desk. Your staff is pretending they don’t know you’re here, which is how I know everyone knows you’re here.”
“Perfect,” I say, and tug my shirt down. I grab my tablet. I grab nothing else. The men can keep their suits and their headlines. I want a lobby and a microphone that works, because nothing else really matters.
The elevator ride is ten floors and a lifetime. I watch the numbers light and go blank, light and go blank, and make myself breathe on the even ones. Jace and Ortiz stand in front of me, one step apart. They frame the door when it opens and then peel away when they see what waits.
Kendra sees me first. It’s always Kendra. Her hand flies to her mouth and then she remembers herself and drops it, shifts her face into friendly neutral like she didn’t just want to cry.
Cal clocks me next and gives a small nod, one of the ones we agreed means “all clear, watch left.” The lobby hums. The fountain does what fountains do. Somewhere, a slot machine sings fake joy and someone believes it.
I step onto the marble and feel the building recognize my weight.
People are looking without looking. The rumor that the Queen has her own guard shows up in the way the operators appear out of nowhere and then become part of the wallpaper.
Spencer ghosts to the right where he can see every door.
Jace flanks my left. Ortiz walks two paces ahead and then stops beside the column so I can go alone.
I cross to the front desk. Kendra straightens. “Ms. Jones,” she says, professionally, eyes bright. “Welcome back.”
“Thank you,” I say, and turn to face the room I picked, the one with the chandeliers and the thousand decisions per minute and the people who will either make me or break me with their approval. “Can I borrow five minutes?”
The lobby answers with that particular quiet it gives a show right before the curtain lifts.
Somewhere in the crowd, a woman who cried in a dorm-style shower a few nights ago watches me with her chin up.
Somewhere else, a man with a security badge who used to look away at the wrong things decides not to.
The television in the bar behind the hostess stand runs the river footage one more time. The caption scrolls. The camera pans. The whole city pretends what washed up is a surprise. It isn’t. Nothing men like that do surprises me anymore.
I take the breath I’ve been saving since the door slammed on a steel box and say the first line of the speech I didn’t write down because I’ve been writing it since I was eighteen.
“Good afternoon,” I say. “I’m Phoenix Jones. If you work here, you probably already know me. If you don’t know me yet, you will.”
Zeus sits at my heel like he’s known he was born for this the whole time. The men are somewhere between the garage and the lobby, I can feel it, a pressure change in my skin. The staff leans in. The cameras on their phones glow and lower. The chandelier listens. My hands stop shaking.
He’s dead, I think, without apology.
I’ll be fine.
And Conrad—wherever he is in this building, whatever he has on his hands—has the only kind of closure a man like him ever gets.
That will have to be enough for now.
“Here’s how it’s going to work,” I say, and start my new life with a smile on my face.