"Maintain biological environments." I finish the sentence. My voice comes out strange. Tight. Because I know what that means. Climate control for keeping omegas at regulated temperatures during heat suppression. A facility designed around bodies. Around biology.
Around Max.
"I'm sending a recon team," I say, reaching for the phone, and my hand is steady now because there's finally something to do. Something concrete. A target. A direction.
"Already called Reyes." Bane meets my eyes. "Team's en route. Surveillance only. No engagement. Document entry points, guard rotations, vehicle patterns. Report directly to you."
I pause. Look at him. My youngest brother. Twenty-four years old. His jaw is set, eyes hard, and underneath the steel there's something I recognize.
Purpose. Fierce, desperate purpose.
"Good," I say.
Now we wait. For Reyes to report back. For Zero to surface. For the databases to give me Vasquez. The waiting is the worst part—worse than the violence, worse than the hard calls. Just sitting in this office while the clock ticks and Max is somewhere I can't reach.
I'm staring at the property maps, tracing possible entry points with a red pen, when Bane's phone buzzes. He reads the screen and the blood drains from his face.
"What?"
He holds it up. A message from our courier service. Someone hand-delivered an envelope to the Graves Industries front desk and now it’s here. Heavy cream paper. No return address. Sealed with wax.
I crack the seal. Same calligraphic handwriting. Same man.
Mr. Graves—
I believe we have matters to discuss. I propose dinner. Tomorrow evening. 8 PM. My associate will provide details.
Your stepbrother is comfortable. For now.
Regards,
Talbot Kline
I read it three times. My jaw aches from clenching.
Your stepbrother is comfortable.
Comfortable. Like Max is lounging at a spa. Like he's not probably locked behind a steel door in a concrete cell in a building full of stolen people. The word comfortable is obscene.
For now.
Two words that carry the weight of everything they haven't done yet. Everything they could do. A deadline wearing a smile. And underneath the civilized penmanship and the wax seal, the real message:I have something that’s yours, and I'm enjoying watching you know it.
Something cracks. Quietly, inside my chest, in the place where the machine meets the man.
I fold the letter. My hands are steady again—but it's a different kind of steady. Not controlled. Cold.
Bane reads it over my shoulder. "He wants to negotiate."
"He wants to perform." I slide the letter into the desk drawer. "Kline didn't kidnap Max because he needs our territory. He did it because he wants us to know he can. The dinner is theater."
"So we don't go."
"We go." I stand. "We go because declining gives him the timeline. We go because face-to-face is where I read people—their tells, their weaknesses, what they reveal when they think they're winning." I meet Bane's eyes. "And we go because everyhour Max is in that facility is an hour too long, and I will not waste a single one."
"What are the rules?"
"Zero doesn't speak. You follow my lead. We're there for our stepbrother. Family concern. Nothing more."
