The gun came apart. The gun went back together. Zain's hands were steady. His jaw was tight. He didn't look up.
"So we're not going to talk about it," Seth said.
"Nothing to talk about."
"You had your hand on my –"
"I remember what happened."
"Then... "
"It shouldn't have happened." Zain's voice was flat. Controlled. The same voice he used to give orders during ops. "I was responsible for you. I crossed a line."
"I asked you to cross it."
"That doesn't matter."
"It does to me."
Zain looked up. Those dark eyes, shuttered now, the warmth that Seth had seen on the mat locked behind something hard and practiced.
"You've been through something traumatic," Zain said, each word measured. "You're in a vulnerable position. I have authority over your safety. What happened was -"
"If you say 'inappropriate,' I'm going to throw this coffee at you."
"…a mistake."
The word hit like a slap.
Seth stood. His chair scraped back across the floor, loud in the quiet kitchen. He didn't trust his voice, so he used his feet instead, walked to the stairs, took them two at a time, and closed his bedroom door with precisely enough force to make a point without making a scene.
He sat on the bed.
His hands were shaking.
Not from anger. Or not just from anger. From the whiplash of being held like he mattered and then told it was a mistake. From the nauseating familiarity of wanting something and having it taken back. From the quiet, devastating understanding that Zain was probably right, which made it worse, because being right and being cruel were not the same thing but they hurt exactly the same
CHAPTER 10
Two AM, and Zain was in the kitchen cleaning a Glock that didn't need cleaning.
He'd been at it for forty minutes. The gun had been clean after five. But his hands needed the work, the ritual of disassemblyand reassembly, the muscle memory that kept the surface steady while everything underneath churned.
Marcus sat across the table with a cup of chai and a manila folder and the patience of a man who could outwait stone. He'd been there when Zain came downstairs. Just sitting. As if two AM kitchen vigils were a normal part of his routine, which, knowing Marcus, they might have been.
The folder lay between them. Ghost's intel, updated surveillance on Mercer's distribution network, financial flows, three new names connected to the staffing agency front. Good work. Important work. Nothing that required a two AM meeting.
"That's not why you're here," Zain said.
"No." Marcus sipped his tea. Steam curled between them. "How's your Arabic?"
The question caught Zain off-balance, which was probably the point. Marcus didn't waste words, and he didn't make small talk.
"Rusty. Why?"
"Your mother spoke it at home?"
"Sometimes. When she was angry. When she was cooking." The memories surfaced unbidden. His mother's hands dusted with flour, her voice sliding between English and Arabic as she narrated her way through recipes she'd learned from her mother, who'd learned them from hers.Habbibi, watch. The dough has to feel like this. Like skin after a bath. You'll know."She died when I was seventeen."
