I hold his hand tighter. Watch the road ahead. The ambulance turns left. We follow.
Chapter 10
The city slides past the tinted windows in the fading light of early evening and I watch it without seeing it, my thumb moving across Bane’s knuckles in a rhythm I don't remember starting.
The car passes the highway exit for the estate.
I sit up. "That was our turn."
Bane stirs against my shoulder. Lifts his head. Blinks at the window, then at Reyes in the rearview mirror.
"Reyes. Where are we going?"
"Mr. Graves arranged a hotel downtown, sir." Reyes's voice is even. Professional. The voice of a man who's been briefed and doesn't elaborate unless asked. "He thought it best that you and Mr. Carter take the night to rest before returning home. Give yourselves time to... gather yourselves. Before Mrs. Graves and Mr. Graves Senior."
Before Margot.
The thought of her hits me in the chest—a sharp, sweet ache that I wasn't expecting. Margot in her cream cardigan, waiting by the phone. She’s probably been an absolute wreck. Worrying in the quiet way she worries, where she doesn't say anything but her hands go still and her eyes get distant and youcan see the social worker in her scanning for damage she can't name yet.
I want to see her. Want to press my face into her shoulder and breathe in her laundry detergent and hear her call mesweetheartin the voice she reserves for the worst days.
But she can't see me like this. Not in stained scrubs with blood on my lip and a bruise blooming across my cheek. Not with tender welts on my back that she might feel when she hugs me tight. Not when every line of my body is screamingsomething happened that I can't explain.
Atlas is right.
We need the night.
WhatIneed right now is simpler. Get out of this car. Find a door I can lock from the inside. Peel these scrubs off my body and stand under water hot enough to scald and wash away everything—the facility, the fluorescent light, the hands, the sounds, the drain in the corner. All of it.
Scrub it off my skin and watch it circle the drain and disappear.
Reyes takes us downtown—past the financial district, past the waterfront, into the kind of neighborhood where the buildings are all glass and money. He pulls around the back of the hotel, down a service ramp into an underground garage. The fluorescent lighting reminds me of the facility and my chest tightens before I can stop it.
Bane feels me tense. His fingers squeeze mine.
"Different fluorescents," he mumbles against my shoulder. "These ones are warmer."
I blow out a ragged breath.
Reyes parks near a service elevator. Opens our door. I help Bane out—his legs are still a little unreliable, the sedative dragging at his coordination, and he leans on me more thanhe'd ever admit if he were fully conscious. Reyes walks ahead, keycard in hand, clearing the path.
The service elevator is steel and industrial. It smells like laundered sheets and has not a spec of dust in the corners. Bane props himself against the wall. I stand beside him. Our reflections stare back at us from the brushed metal doors—two people in stained scrubs, one with a swollen cheek and dried blood on his lip, the other with raw wrists and bruised knuckles.
We look like we crawled out of a disaster.
We did.
The elevator opens onto a private hallway. One door at the end. Reyes swipes the keycard and pushes it open, stepping aside to let us through.
The suite unfolds in front of us—enormous, floor-to-ceiling windows framing the city skyline against a bruised purple sky, all pale marble and soft furniture and the kind of tasteful silence that only money can buy. After five days of concrete and fluorescent hum, the space feels almost aggressive in its comfort.
Too open. Too much glass. My body keeps waiting for walls to close in.
Atlas is by the windows. Already facing the door. As if he was counting down the seconds until we walked through.
His eyes drop to our hands.
Bane's fingers release mine like he touched a live wire. Fast, sharp—not a letting go but a flinch, his hand jerking back to his side, and the absence burns up my arm like a phantom limb.
