"I was trying to protect him." Atlas's voice is wrecked. "He couldn't consent. Not in that state. I wasn't going to take advantage of—"
"I know that. You know that." I turn to face him fully. "But Max doesn't. All Max knows is that one brother assaulted him and now another brother rejected him after making him beg for it. He probably thinks this is all a game to us. That we're playing with him—hurting him, then being gentle, then pushing him away. Like he's a toy we pick up when we're bored."
"No." Atlas presses his hand over his mouth. His eyes are too bright. "That's not—I would never—"
"He woke up alone." My throat is tight. Burning. "After everything that happened tonight. After begging us to claim him and being told no. He woke up alone, in clean underwear he doesn't remember putting on, with no idea why you stopped. What do you think that felt like? What do you think went through his head?"
Silence. Horrible, crushing silence.
Zero stops pacing. He's facing the wall, hands braced against it, shoulders heaving like he's trying not to put his fist through the drywall. When he speaks, his voice is raw. Scraped clean of its usual sharp edges.
"That fucking idiot." Each word is its own sentence. Its own wound. "That stupid, fucking idiot—"
I check the time on the laptop. 11:47 PM. The meeting was at 10:30.
"He should be back by now." My voice sounds hollow. "If it was just a drug deal, he'd be back by now."
Atlas is already moving. "We need to go. Now. Zero—your car. Bane, you're with me."
We don't argue. Don't hesitate. Within minutes, we're in two separate vehicles tearing through the city streets. Zero's black sports car ahead of us, weaving through traffic like a missile locked on target. Atlas's SUV right behind, both of us silent except for the GPS voice guiding us toward an address that feels more like a death sentence with every passing mile.
The industrial district swallows us whole. Warehouses. Shipping containers. The kind of place that time forgot and God abandoned.
And then I see it.
"There." I point through the windshield. "That's Max's car."
It's parked at the curb near the intersection—the exact address from the text messages. Doors closed. Dark inside. No sign of movement.
No sign of Max.
Atlas pulls up behind it. Zero screeches to a halt on the other side, practically launching himself out of the driver's seat before the engine dies.
"Max!" Zero's voice echoes off the empty buildings. "MAX!"
Nothing. Just the distant hum of the highway and the wind rattling through chain-link fences.
I approach the car slowly. Cup my hands against the driver's side window, peer inside. His duffel bag is in the back seat—full of clothes and his laptop charger and the pieces of a life he was trying to escape.
But no Max. He got out. He locked the car like he expected to come back.
He never came back.
"Move." Zero shoulders me aside. Before I can react, he slams his elbow through the driver's side window. Glass explodes inward. He reaches through, unlocks the door, yanks it open. Leans in, searches.
"Keys are gone," he says, voice tight. "He took them with him. He got out. He walked away from this car."
"And then what?" I look around at the empty street, the abandoned warehouses, the shadows that could hide anything. "Where is he?"
"He's not here." Zero is circling the vehicle, looking underneath, checking between the nearby shipping containers like Max might be hiding. His movements are frantic. Desperate. "Where the fuck is he? He should be HERE."
"Zero." Atlas's voice is sharp. "Calm down."
"Don't fucking tell me to calm down!" Zero spins on him, chest heaving. "He's GONE. Someone took him. Someone—"
"I know." Atlas holds up a hand. "I know. But losing control isn't going to help him."
Zero makes a sound—something between a snarl and a sob—and slams his fist into the rear window. It shatters, glass exploding across the pavement, blood immediately welling from his knuckles where they drag across the broken edges. He doesn't seem to notice. Just moves to the passenger side. Then the back. Methodical destruction, like he's trying to break something inside himself along with the glass.
