“How is he?” Marcus asked them.
One of them shrugged. “Quiet. Sore. Breathing.”
“Still tied up?” Marcus checked.
“Yeah.”
He looked at me. “You’re sure?”
“No,” I said again. “But I need to talk to him while he’s still scared enough to listen and lucid enough to understand.”
Marcus considered that, then nodded. “Door stays open,” he reminded me. “We’re right here.”
I nodded back and stepped inside.
The room was … strange.
Not a cell, exactly. There was a bed, a small dresser, a chair. Guest quarters, maybe, repurposed for temporary confinement. The lighting was softer than I’d expected. This was containment, not torture.
Derek sat in the chair, his wrists bound in front of him now instead of behind, zip ties biting into skin already blooming with bruises. His ankles were lashed to the chair legs. There was gauze taped across the bridge of his nose and along his cheekbone, pink where blood had seeped through. One eye was swollen, a dark bloom spreading out like storm clouds.
He looked up when I entered.
“Jesus, Amelia,” he rasped. His voice was thick, consonants muffled around swelling. “Did you send them or did they improvise?”
I let the door stay half-open behind me. The two guards were visible in my peripheral vision—silent sentries.
“I stopped it before they got creative,” I said. “This is you on the light package.”
He huffed something that might have been a laugh. Then winced, hand twitching reflexively toward his face before the restraint reminded him he couldn’t reach.
Up close, the fear was more obvious. Not the wild-eyed panic of the hallway. A deeper, quieter terror. The kind that came after the first wave, when your body realized the threat wasn’t over, just changing shape.
“I didn’t think you’d come,” he said.
“I needed to see you,” I said. “To decide how much of you is still … you.”
That landed. His gaze dropped, shoulders curling inward as much as the bindings allowed.
“I screwed up,” he said. No preamble. No spin. “Not just with them. With you. I crossed a line I swore I’d never cross.”
My forearm throbbed on cue, phantom fingers around bone.
“Yes,” I said. “You did.”
“I’m not going to ask you to forgive that,” he added quickly, looking up again. “I don’t. I see myself in that hallway and I want to take a swing at him, too.”
I believed him. Or believed that part of him, at least.
“You got scared,” I said. “You let that fear justify things it shouldn’t have. With me. With The Vanguard.”
His mouth twisted. “Is that what they’re calling themselves?”
“Yes,” I said. “And you let them use you.”
“Do you have any idea what it’s like out there?” he shot back, more energy in his voice now. “Trying to keep a newsroom open when ad revenue is gone, subscriptions plummet, and every billionaire with a savior complex wants to turn you into their personal mouthpiece? I was holding us together with duct tape and favors, Amelia. They came in with a checkbook and a story about public safety. About shadow wars and unaccountable power. I thought—” He cut himself off, jaw clenching. “I thought we’d be the good guys again.”
“You thought you could ride the tiger,” I said. “And instead, it’s riding you.”
