"I'm not his property."
Something moves in his pale eyes, brief and unreadable. "No. You're not." He crouches down so that we're at eye level, and this close I can smell him. "You're the thing he'd burn everything down to protect. That's much more interesting than property."
I think about Phoenix saying those exact words to me once. I'd burn the world down for you. I don't know if Dominic has heard the recording of that moment or if he simply understands his brother's killer well enough to have arrived at the same language independently, and I'm not sure which possibility frightens me more.
"He's going to find you," I say. "Whatever you think this accomplishes, he's going to find you and it won't end the way you're planning."
"Perhaps." Dominic stands. He straightens his jacket and takes another slow sip of his coffee, looking down at me with those colorless eyes. "Or perhaps he'll make a mistake. Grief makes people reckless. Love makes them worse." He glances toward the two men by the door, some silent communication passing between them, before his gaze comes back to me. "My brother made the mistake of being impulsive. Of letting his appetites run ahead of his judgment. I've spent my whole life watching him do it, cleaning up after him, making excuses for him to our mother."
There's something in his voice when he says the last part. Something that isn't the controlled flatness he's maintainedsince I woke up on this floor. It's gone in an instant, smoothed back over, but I heard it.
"He was still your brother," I say quietly.
The pale eyes sharpen. "Don't."
"I'm not defending what he did to me. I'm saying I understand why you're here."
For a long moment he just looks at me. The chain above keeps its quiet rhythm. The wind moves across the roof.
"Understanding why I'm here doesn't change whyyou'rehere," he says finally.
He reaches into his jacket pocket and pulls out a phone. Not mine, something older, a prepaid model with a cracked screen but a camera lens that catches the light. He crouches again and holds it up so I can see the screen, a number already typed in, waiting.
"You're going to call him," Dominic says. "And you're going to tell him where you are. And then we're going to see how much Phoenix Crawford really loves you."
He presses the phone into my bound hands. The plastic is cold against my fingers.
I look at the number on the screen. I look at Dominic's face, at the pale gray eyes that have decided exactly what they're doing and exactly what they want from it.
I think about Phoenix. About the way he looked at me last night in the dark, his hands framing my face, the absolute certainty in his voice when he made me a promise.
I press call.
CHAPTER 28- PHOENIX
My phone rings at 4:23 in the afternoon and I know something is wrong before I answer it.
Torres never lets a call go to voicemail.
I answer the video call.
The screen flips to Dominic Webb's face. He's standing in what looks like a warehouse, concrete walls behind him, harsh lighting casting everything in a flat white that makes the shadows underneath his cheekbones look carved. He looks certain, like a man who has already run every version of this conversation and knows how each one ends.
Then he steps aside.
Jade is behind him, tied to a metal chair, her wrists bound behind her back. There's a red mark along her jaw that wasn't there this morning. Her hair is loose and tangled and she's looking directly at the camera with an expression I recognize, the one she wears when she's terrified and refusing to show it. Her eyes find mine through the screen and stay there.
Something happens in my chest that I don't have a word for.
"Phoenix Crawford." Dominic’s tone is friendly. "Thank you for picking up."
I drag my eyes from Jade to him. Every muscle in my body has gone very still, the stillness of something under extreme pressure that has not yet decided which direction to move. "What did you do to her face."
"She fought. Your security man fought harder." A pause. "Torres, I believe his name was."
The word was lands like a stone into still water, and I feel the rings of it moving outward through my body. I knew when Torres stopped answering. I let myself pretend otherwise for twenty minutes because the alternative was this, another body added to a count that started with Marcus.
"Touch her again," I say quietly, "and there will be nothing left of you or anyone who matters to you.”
