"And what we actually are to him?" The words slip out before my brother can tamp them down. His eyes snap to the floor and his jaw ticcs.
What are we–actually–to Max Carter?
"That…stays invisible." I hold Bane's gaze. "The moment Kline confirms Max is more than a stepbrother—that we've…” I clear my throat. “Touched him—Max's value becomes infinite. He goes from leverage to a weapon that can destroy us."
Bane nods.
Neither of us says anything for a long moment. The clock ticks. The maps wait. Then Bane dismisses himself and I slide back into my seat.
The waiting is the hardest part.
I open the desk drawer. The ransom note sits beside Kline's letter. Two pieces of cream paper. Two threats in beautiful handwriting.
There will not be a third.
Chapter 3
Routine is how they break you.
Not the violence—that comes in flashes, sharp and bright, and your body learns to brace for it. It's the routine that grinds you down. The sameness. The fluorescent hum that never changes pitch. The meals that arrive at the same intervals through a slot in the door—protein bar, water bottle, protein bar, water bottle—until time stops being hours and minutes and becomes the space between feedings.
Like a dog. Like livestock.
I've been here roughly thirty-six hours. I think. There are no windows and the fluorescent tube never turns off, so I'm measuring time by meals and injections. Four meals. Three injections. The math says a day and a half, give or take.
The injections come every eight hours. The woman in scrubs—I've started thinking of her astheNurse, capital N, because she's never given me a name and I refuse to give her the dignity of one—arrives with a guard, administers the heat blocker into the crook of my arm, checks my vitals, and leaves. Ninety seconds. I've counted. She doesn't speak to me anymore. Doesn't ask questions. Just the needle, the cuff, the penlight, the clipboard.
Ninety seconds and gone.
The blocker hits like a wave of cold water. My body temperature drops. The low simmer that's been building underneath—a warmth I keep telling myself is just the temperature in the room, just the wool blanket, just anything other than what it actually is—goes flat.
Dead. Like pouring sand on embers.
Except this last time, the embers didn't go all the way out.
I felt it twenty minutes after she left. A flicker. Low in my belly, barely there, like a pilot light that refuses to die. The blockers pushed it down but couldn't extinguish it. My biology is fighting back, and my biology is stronger than whatever pharmaceutical they're pumping into me.
I don't think about what happens when the blockers stop working.
Idon'tthink about it.
The guards rotate every six hours. I know because the footsteps change—different weight, different rhythm, different boot size on concrete. The shaved-head guard and his partner take what I think is the night shift. A different pair during the day. Lighter steps. Less talking. The day guards are quieter, more mechanical. The night guards are the ones who slammed my head into the wall.
Meals come through a slot I didn't notice the first day—a narrow hinged panel at the base of the door, just wide enough for a plastic tray. Protein bars. Water. Twice, an apple. I eat everything. Not because I'm hungry—my stomach is a fist of anxiety that hasn't unclenched since I woke up here—but because Ellis saidyou will eat what is provided,and the back of my skull still throbs where the guard taught me what noncompliance costs.
I eat. I drink. I comply.
And Ilisten.
The building breathes around me. Not silence—never silence. The ventilation system hums at a constant low frequency, punctuated by the tick and shudder of climate control cycling. Pipes in the walls. The faint, industrial drone of something heavy running somewhere deeper in the building—a generator, maybe, or compressors for the HVAC system that keeps this place precisely cool enough for bodies that run hot.
Footsteps in the corridor. Dozens a day. I've started tracking patterns—the sharp click of the Nurse's shoes, the heavy thud of the guards' boots, the occasional softer step that might be Ellis or might be someone I haven't met yet. Doors opening and closing. The electronic buzz of locks engaging and disengaging. A rhythm. A schedule. A system designed by people who've been doing this long enough to have it down to clockwork.
And underneath the mechanical sounds, the human ones.
The crying hasn't stopped. It ebbs and flows—sometimes just a quiet whimper, sometimes full-body sobs that shake through the concrete and rattle in my chest. The male voice I heard that first night has gone quiet. I try not to think about what that means.
But the lullaby is still there.
