Good. He should be.
"What?" he says. His voice is casual. Bored. The performance of someone who doesn't give a shit. But his eyes are sharp. Tracking. "Why are you both staring at me?"
Bane looks at me over his shoulder. The question clear in his eyes.
Your call.
I straighten. Roll my shoulders back. Feel every inch of my height, my frame, the authority I carry not because I asked for it but because I took it when no one else would.
"Come in," I say to Zero. My voice is even. Measured. Pleasant, even. The kind of calm that has made men across negotiating tables break into a sweat because they know—theyknow—that this level of composure costs something. That it's a lid on something pressurized. That the quieter I get, the more dangerous I become.
Zero knows me better than anyone alive.
His eyes sharpen.
"Why?" The single word is a probe. A test.
"Because we need to talk." I hold his gaze across the length of my office. Let him see past the composure. Let him see what's underneath—the heat, the fury, the thing with claws that's barely leashed. "About Max."
Something moves across Zero's face. Fast. A flash of—what? Guilt? Fear? Recognition? It's gone before I can name it, buried under that mask of indifference he wears like second skin.
But I catch it.
I always catch it.
Bane steps aside. Holds the door open wider. An invitation that isn't really an invitation at all.
Zero looks at the open doorway. Looks at me. Looks at the bourbon on the desk and the indentations in the wood where my nails bit in.
For a moment—just a moment—I think he's going to bolt. Run the way he always does when things get too real, too personal, too close to the parts of himself he keeps locked in a box and buried deep.
But Zero has never been a coward.
Reckless. Destructive. Self-sabotaging. All of those.
Never a coward.
He walks in. His boots thud against the hardwood. Each step deliberate.
Bane closes the door behind him.
The click of the latch sounds like a gunshot.
Zero stands in the center of my office. Jacket still on. Keys still in his hand. Looking at me with those pale, unreadable eyes.
And I think:You're my brother. I love you. I would kill for you.
But if you hurt him—if you touched him and broke him and left him bleeding—
I will make you answer for it.
"Sit down," I say.
Zero doesn't move.
"Sit. Down."
He sits.
