The room breathes. The house shifts in its bones like a boat finding a calmer patch of water. Zeus head-butts my knee and leans his weight into me like he understands none of this but recognizes the geometry of grief. I sink a hand into his neck and close my eyes for a second because the dog doesn’t know how to lie.
“Isn’t it funny,” I say, voice thinner than I want, “that all the Masterson men want to fuck the housekeeper?” The words taste like pennies, copper eating at my tongue and throat. I hate myself for them even as I say them. “First his father. Then his son. At least he didn’t knock up his sister.”
“Don’t,” Atticus says sharply, and the warning isn’t for him. It’s for me. “Conrad only ever wantedyou.Not a symbol. Not the uniform for a fling or a good time. You.”
“His father forced me away from him once,” I say, ignoring the mercy in his tone because if I take one more soft thing I will fall apart. “He told me I wasn’t good enough and never would be until I broke and ran. Maybe—maybe—he did it because it was the truth. Or maybe he did it because he likes breaking things he didn’t build. Maybe he just wanted to break his son and me all at once.”
“All of that can be true,” Storm says. “Men like him don’t really need a reason.”
I laugh, one sound, ugly. “True.”
Maverick pushes a glass of water across the table to me. I don’t want it but I take it anyway. It’s cold. It makes my teeth hurt. The pain helps, though, because everything else feels like a lie.
Pain? Pain is the only truth in this life.
“If it’s true,” Atticus says, choosing each word with exquisite care, like he’s defusing a bomb, “then we do whatever is necessary to keep you clean and safe and to remove every man who thought this was a lever he could pull. If it’s false, we prove it fast and we use the proof like a blade to help Conrad eliminate his father for good. Either way, he doesn’t get to run this.”
“What if it’s true,” I whisper, because saying it at full volume might crack the boards under my feet. “What if it’s true, and last night I…what am I, then?”
“You’re Phoenix,” Maverick says simply. It sounds dumb, and it fixes something, anyway. “You’re you. That’s it.”
“And he’s still Conrad,” Storm adds. “Nothing from a man like Masterson Senior gets to define the way you two look at each other.”
“DNA doesn’t change consent,” Atticus says, steady. “It changes the law. It changes choices. It doesn’t rewrite what happened inside a room between two people who loved each other last night. It only tells us what to do next with that information.”
“What to do next,” I repeat, flat.
Storm pushes off the jamb and crosses to the table. He lays out four little plastic-wrapped swab kits Spencer pulled from somewhere waiting because of course he did—white envelopes and everything. “If we’re doing this, let’s do this.”
“Now?” I ask.
“Now,” Maverick says, like the answer should have been obvious. “Before we start inventing new stories to torture ourselves with.”
We do it at the table like we’re signing a lease. Atticus reads the instructions from online out loud because he doesn’t trust any of us to not be idiots when it matters.
Storm times our no-food-no-drink window on his phone, taps the screen when thirty minutes passes, and hands me my packet first like I’m the one who gets to set the tone. I swab the inside of my cheek with a sterile Q-tip and slide the stick into the tube. It clicks shut with a tiny sound that feels too cheerful.
“Initials here,” Atticus says softly, pointing to a line on the label I don’t remember seeing before. “Not your name. Date. Time. That’s it.”
I writeP.J.and the seconds tick by endlessly. Atticus doesA.W.Storm scrawlsS.C.Maverick,M.L.We line the tubes up like chess pieces and stare at them like they might hatch.
“Courier picks up in twenty,” Atticus says. “I’ll grab Conrad’s DNA from his bathroom. I’m sure his toothbrush is there.”
“How long?” I ask, and I hate that my voice is hopeful. I hate that I want the science to rush just for me.
Spencer walks back in as if summoned. “Six hours for a preliminary read on markers that would make it impossible to ignore the truth,” he says. “Twenty-four hours for the rest. We’ll have a provisional by tonight.”
Six hours. I can do six hours and not crawl out of my skin if my hands are busy and no one says my name more than necessary. Six hours is nothing. Maybe I can put an audiobook on or something. My fingers tremble.
Atticus sees it hit me. He puts both hands on the table and leans in. “Work,” he says. “We have plenty that needs doing. Board package. HR policy. Press language. You said you wanted a front-office desk? Today is a good day to start. The more we hold, the less this holds us. And no matter what the results are, you’re one of us. Take your throne and make it shine.”
“Give me the staff list,” I say. “And the draft you started for escort protocols. I’ll write the rest. And I want the vendor contract language for cleaning crews. No more single-person routes. Ever.”
“It’s already on your tablet,” he says. “I put the HR folder in the top row.”
“Of course you did,” I murmur.
We move for an hour like normal humans—emails, calls, a quiet fight over whether the trash contract can be terminated for cause because they’re overcharging us through our fucking teeth, two cups of coffee I don’t taste.
