The room goes still. Something in Maliek’s posture shifts—stiffens, like a string just got pulled too tight.
“You didwhat?”
“You heard me.”
His jaw locks. He sets down the mug he never asked to pick up. The air thickens.
“You lethimbe the father?”
I step forward, voice low. “Heisthe father, Maliek. You knew that.”
“No,” he says, voice suddenly cold, flat. “Isuspected. You let me think—I raised him like?—”
“You didn’t raise him!” I shout. “You showed up in pieces when it suited you.”
“Because you shut me out!”
“Because you werenever safe!”
He takes one step toward me, then stops himself. “You think Jav is?”
“No,” I whisper. “But he’s here.”
Maliek stares at me. And then something behind his eyes closes.
“I hope you’re right,” he says quietly. “For Ben’s sake.”
He walks out.
I don’t watch him go.
Because I’m already moving.
The Redscale safehouseis buried under three blocks of old freight tunnels, tucked behind a burned-out med station and a noodle stand that never reopens before dusk.
I shouldn’t know where it is. Jav never told me.
But I remember things.
I remember how his voice would change when he got a certain kind of call. I remember how his eyes would scan exits when a name got dropped. I remember where his hand would twitch—habit, memory, muscle.
I find it.
Because I’ve always been watching.
Because when the people you love keep secrets, you learn how to follow their silences.
I don’t have a plan.
I just have fear, and anger, and a heart that’s thudding like a warning beacon in my chest.
And somewhere—somewhere below me, in the belly of this city—Jav is walking into something.
And I can’t let him do it alone.
CHAPTER 34
JAV
