"Zero." Atlas's voice cuts through the destruction. "Enough. We need to think."
"Think?" Zero whirls on him, face twisted with fury. "They have him, Atlas. They have Max. While we were standing around arguing about who gets to claim him, someone else took him. And you want to THINK?"
"I want to get him back." Atlas is already pulling out his phone. "And that means doing this right. Not charging in blind."
He dials. Puts the phone to his ear. His voice shifts—hardens into a bite.
"Morrison. It's Graves. I need you on standby—we may be looking at a ransom situation or worse. Kline Cartelinvolvement. Yes. Keep it quiet for now." He hangs up. Dials again. "Reyes. Rally everyone. I mean everyone—every man we have who handles the dirty work. Full alert. I want eyes on every Kline property in the city by dawn."
Zero is pacing, hands still dripping blood onto the pavement, his whole body vibrating with barely contained violence.
Atlas turns to me. "Bane. I need you to—"
"Fuck that." The words come out before I can stop them. "I'm going straight to Talbot Kline's front door. We're going to discuss this alpha to alpha."
"No." Atlas's voice is sharp. "That's exactly what they want. They're baiting us into a confrontation."
"I don't care what they want. They have Max."
"And if you show up at Kline's door alone, they'll have you too. Or they'll kill you and send Max pieces of your body as a message." Atlas steps closer, his jaw tight. "I need you to handle the business. Make sure all our shipments and deliveries run clean while we pull manpower to search. Keep everything afloat."
"You want me to do logistics while Max is—" I can't even finish the sentence. "Are you fucking kidding me?"
"Someone has to. The organization doesn't stop because we're in crisis. If anything, this is when our enemies will look for weakness—"
"I'm not taking a backseat on this." I'm in his face now, chest to chest, my own rage finally boiling over. "You don't get to bench me like some errand boy. He's not YOUR omega, Atlas. You don't get to make all the decisions about his rescue like this is another business acquisition."
Atlas's eyes flash. His posture shifts—suddenly we're not brothers, we're two alphas squaring off, the air thick with pheromones and tension.
"Someone has to lead," he says quietly. "Someone has to make the hard calls. That's what I do. That's what I've always done."
"Maybe that's the problem." I don't back down. "You've been making decisions for everyone—for Zero, for me, for Max—and look where it got us. He ran because he thought we were playing games with him. Maybe if you'd actually talked to him instead of just deciding what was best—"
"Don't put this on me—"
"ENOUGH."
Zero's voice cuts through the night like a blade. We both turn.
He's standing in the middle of the street, hands still bloody, glass crunching under his boots. His face is transformed—not rage anymore, not desperation. Something harder. Sharper. The look of a man who's found absolute clarity in the middle of chaos.
"We get him back." Each word is a hammer blow. "Nothing else matters. Not the business. Not the shipments. Not who's in charge or who made what decision." He steps closer, his eyes moving between us. "We get Max back. I don't fucking care what has to be done. I don't care who we have to kill or what we have to burn or what lines we have to cross."
He stops. His chest is heaving, but his voice is steady.
"He'sours. All of ours. We get him back. Then we can fight over him all we want." He looks between us, something hard and uncompromising in his eyes. "But not now. Now we work together. We getourboy back. And anyone who took him is going to learn what happens when they fuck with what’sours."
The silence that follows is absolute. The three of us standing in the wreckage of Max's car, surrounded by shattered glass and dried blood and the weight of everything we've done wrong.
Atlas nods. Once. Sharp.
Zero doesn't nod. He just turns and walks back toward his car, leaving bloody footprints on the pavement.
"I know people in the Kline organization," he says over his shoulder. "People who owe me favors. Or fear me enough to talk." He yanks open the driver's door. "I'll find out where they're keeping him. You two figure out how we're getting him out."
He peels away into the night, taillights disappearing around a corner.
Atlas and I stand in silence for a long moment, staring at the empty street.
