Max smirked. “Because I don’t want him showing up at the charity gala next weekend. Rosalie wants it to be a nice night, and I don’t want to ruin it for her.”
I gave him a flat look. “So you had him arrested?”
Max shrugged. “I prefer the term‘temporarily detained.’”
I ran my tongue over my teeth, glancing at the two uniformed officers standing outside the holding room. “And what exactly was the charge?”
“Weapon possession. Minor scuffle with one of my guys. Nothing permanent, but enough to keep him tied up for a few days.”
Jesus Christ.
This was a waste of my time.
I shoved my hands into my pockets and looked toward the holding cell.
Callahan hadn’t moved.
I should have been at the office handling real problems, but instead I was standing here watching my boss treat a grown man’sarrestlike a minor inconvenience.
Max pulled out his phone, checking something before stepping toward the exit. “Make sure he stays in there long enough to miss the gala. The paperwork should hold up for a few days.”
I sighed, rubbing my fingers over my jaw. “And what if he gets out?”
Max shot me a look. “Then you’ll take care of it.”
Ofcourse.
I should’ve walked out too. I should’ve gotten in my car, gone back to the office, and let this whole thing play out the way Max wanted it to.
Instead I watched through the glass as Callahan leaned back in his chair, the overhead light casting shadows over his face. He looked too relaxed for someone who’d just been dragged in here in cuffs.
I hated that Max Romano was tangled up with the Callahans. But really, the blame was on Remy for bringing me into any of this to begin with.
There’d been a time when Remy and I were just two kids surviving on the fringes. That was before suits, before complicated favors, before I knew the price of silence. Remy had been the closest thing I had to family—a brother in a house neither of us had wanted to call home. Back then loyalty wasn’t negotiable, it was automatic. Instinctual. A matter of survival.I’d protected Remy, and he’d watched my back in return. I’d thought it was simple back then.
I knew now that nothing ever stayed simple.
Years had passed, and Remy got adopted. He joined a law firm, while I joined the military. He climbed the ladder, while I climbed ranks. But we never quite cut the cord. Remy always found his way back when he needed someone who wasn’t afraid of getting his hands dirty. And as for me? I always answered, because I’d never known how not to.
Loyalty to Remy was the only thing I had left that made sense.
So when he fell into trouble with the Callahans, when their world started bleeding into ours—into mine—I didn’t ask questions. Remy pointed, and I moved.
The Callahan brothers were everywhere, all fucking three of them.
Cade, the politician climbing Capitol Hill; James, the Federal agent whose badge opened doors I’d rather keep shut; and Sebastian, the barnacle who’d never learned to keep his hands clean.
Remy needed Cade’s reputation clean, so I made sure it stayed spotless. And when James Callahan decided to poke around my classified history, my own private ghosts, I’d bit my tongue and let him. All because Remy had asked me to.
That meant I’d spent years tangled up with the Callahan brothers. Years of late-night calls, blood in dark alleys, evidence wiped clean, and silence. Always silence. They never asked how I slept at night, and I never volunteered the information. Men like Sebastian weren’t interested in apologies, only results.
I didn’t owe the Callahans loyalty. I didn’t owe Max Romano or the Clarkes loyalty either. My loyalty started and ended with Remy. And Remy knew it. He counted on it. Sometimes it felt like he used it. But what choice did I have? He was the onlyfamily I’d ever known. I trusted him—not always his judgment, and never his methods, but him. Remy was the last tether holding me to something real, something human, even when the rest of my life felt like paperwork and quiet violence.
But that meant, by extension, I worked for whoever Remy needed me to. I never got to pick sides; I just made sure Remy survived on whichever side he chose. For a long while, that had meant the Callahans’ side.
Curiosity got the better of me. It always seemed to where Sebastian Callahan was concerned. Against my better judgment—and definitely against my own damn interests—I stepped into the interrogation room, pulled out the chair across from him, and took my time easing into it.
I stared at Sebastian sitting behind the table, cuffs rattling loosely on his wrists, a crooked smirk on his face as if he weren’t stuck in here for the night. As if I weren’t the one holding all the keys. It was hard to look at him without remembering every late-night deal, every favor I’d done in the name of someone else’s ambition.
