"He's twenty years old." Atlas's voice shakes. Actually shakes. "He was probably scared and confused and going through something he doesn't understand, and you—"
"I know." The words rip out of Zero like they're being torn from somewhere deep. "I know, okay? I know I fucked up. I knew it the second it was over and he looked at me like—"
He stops.
The pause is physical. A void.
"Like what?" Bane. Quiet. Almost gentle.
Zero doesn't answer.
I press my hand against my mouth. Hard. Press until my lips hurt against my teeth. Because the sound trying to crawl up my throat—I don't know what it is. A sob. A scream. Something broken and formless that has no name.
They know.
They fuckingknow.
They don't have the details—not all of them—but they know enough. They've pieced it together from fragments and silences and the way I can't sit down without wincing.
What I am. What Zero did. What I let him do.
The shame hits me so hard my knees almost buckle. White-hot. Blinding. Every word Linda ever said flooding back at once—disgusting, filthy, unnatural—and she was right, she was right, she was alwaysright—
Inside the office, something shatters.
Glass. Loud. The sharp crack of something thrown against a wall or a desk or a body.
Then a thud. Heavy. The sound of a body hitting furniture.
"Don't you fucking touch me—" Zero's voice, but different now. Guttural. The mask fully gone. Just animal underneath.
"Or what?" Atlas. Cold. Lethal. "What are you going to do, Zero? Hit me? Like you hurt him?"
"I didn't hurt—"
"He can barely walk!"
Another crash. Louder. Something heavy toppling—a chair, maybe. Or a body hitting a bookshelf. The sound of books cascading. Glass crunching underfoot.
Then they're moving. Both of them. I hear the scuffle—feet on hardwood, the grunt of impact, the sharp crack of fist meeting bone. The desk scraping across the floor with a screech of wood on wood.
The door explodes open.
They come through it locked together—Zero and Atlas, tangled in a violence that's nothing like the controlled precision they use in their professional lives. This is raw. Primal. Brothers tearing at each other with the same hands that used to hold each other up.
Atlas has Zero by the collar. His fist cocked back. Blood on his knuckles already—his or Zero's, I can't tell. His face is barely recognizable. The composure gone. The CEO gone. The careful, controlled man who speaks in measured sentences and never raises his voice—gone. What's left is something older and wilder. Like an alpha protecting what'shis.
Zero breaks free. Stumbles back. His lip is split—blood running down his chin, dripping onto his black shirt. His eyes are blazing. Not cold anymore. Not ice. Something molten and desperate and furious.
He swings.
His fist connects with Atlas's jaw. The sound is sickening—wet, meaty, the crunch of bone on bone. Atlas's head snaps to the side. He doesn't go down. Just turns his face back slowly. Deliberately. Like the hit was nothing. Like it was a gnat.
And lunges.
They hit the hallway wall so hard the sconce rattles. The lightbulb flickers. Picture frames shake. Plaster dust rains down.
Atlas pins Zero against the wall. Forearm across his throat. Not choking. Containing. His face inches from Zero's.
