I didn’t answer. He wasn’t asking.
“Michael Jennet,” he said a minute later, slower, the name settling into something he could see now. “SaintMichael, Father Michael, Uncle Michael, all the same guy. Eleven years, Leon. He’s been doing this for eleven years.”
I logged that and went under.
When I surfaced, the laptop was still open and Caleb was still in the chair, but the angle of the light had moved across the floor and the cup beside him had gone cold. He didn’t notice me come back. He was scrolling, slow now, lips moving without sound,and I let him keep going because he needed to finish the page before he could look up.
“Three jurisdictions,” he said eventually, more to himself than to me. “Two charities. Both registered as youth outreach, both with the same accountant—Jesus Christ, the same accountant. Who hires the same accountant for two laundering fronts? That’s amateur. That’s almost insulting.” A short, breathless laugh that wasn’t a laugh. “There’s a board, Leon. There’s a board. I—I know one of these names. I’ve seen this guy. He’s done a TED talk.”
His voice cracked at the end of that and he stopped, set the laptop down on the mattress, and pressed both palms into his eyes for a long moment.
I watched him.
There was nothing to say that would make him take his hands down faster, so I waited, and eventually he did.
“Jesus this is a mess,” he said, not even aware I was watching, then he picked the laptop back up. “Buyers above him,” he murmured, returning to his pattern. “Suppliers below him. He’s the choke point. We get him, we get the layer above, we get the layer below. We get all of it, Leon. We can get all of it.”
I went under again before he finished the next sentence.
When I woke fully, he was asleep in the chair, the laptop on his stomach, head tilted at an angle that would hurt him later. The folder was still open on the screen. I couldn’t read it from where I lay, but I didn’t need to. It was day three—or what I took to be day three—and I was done with the constraint. I sat up first, tested balance, pain response, range, then swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood without assistance, ignoring the tug through my side because it was manageable, because stopping was no longer required.
“I’m up,” I said.
A sharp inhale from Caleb; something clattered to the floor as he jolted and looked up so fast his chair scraped against the floor, the laptop nearly sliding off his knees as he caught it one-handed, eyes locked on me as if I’d done something reckless instead of inevitable.
“What are you doing?” he demanded, already on his feet.
“Standing,” I said.
“No, you’re not,” he shot back, hands hovering as if he didn’t know whether to touch me or not after how that had gone last time. “You’re supposed to still be in bed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s healing,” he snapped, then dragged a hand through his hair, frustration bleeding through the edges. “You nearly died. You don’t get to just decide you’re done. You don’t get to do that to me.”
“I didn’t nearly die.”
He stared at me.
“You were bleeding out in my arms,” he said, quieter now, but it landed harder than if he’d shouted it. “Don’t rewrite it.”
“I’m still here,” I said.
“That’s not the point,” he said.
It was.
But I didn’t say it.
He stepped closer, more careful this time, one hand coming to my side, light pressure, checking without pushing, tracking my reaction, and I let him, because stopping him would escalate this in a way that wasn’t useful.
“You’re not fine,” he muttered, more to himself than to me.
“I am.”
He huffed a breath that wasn’t quite a laugh, something strained and tired and too close to breaking, and for a second, he stared at me as though he was trying to decide what to do with me.
“Sit down,” he said. “Please.”
