"I need to talk," I said.
"Hell yes, you do. Come in."
His office felt smaller than usual, thanks to a stack of cardboard boxes in one corner. Or maybe it was me, too much of whatever I was carrying to fit comfortably in a room with one small window.
I sat in the chair Nadia had taken when we'd watched the footage together, my gaze landing on the topmost box. It was taped shut and marked in Malakai's blocky handwriting. Pacific Watch.
He caught me looking. "Lighthouse lease is close," he said. "State's got more red tape than a Christmas parade, but it'll come. Chase and I are making it official."
He didn't say more, and I didn't push. There was bigger trouble in the room than wherever those two were setting up shop.
I told him about Nadia's kitchen. About Samantha Morrison's visit, the revised offer, the threat about my record. About what Nadia had said to me and what I'd said back, which hadn't been enough and had come too late.
Malakai listened the way he always did. No interruptions, no reactions, filing everything away. When I finished, he was quiet for a minute.
"Pippa from Durango's material holds," he said. I looked at him. "Chase and I spent the week pressure-testing everything she sent. The filings, the correspondence, and the two phone recordings. All of it checks out, and her lawyer's name for the play is the right one. Tortious interference. Angie Morton backed that up."
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Using an associate's background to coerce a sale. Elevate's own counsel knows exactly what it is, which is why, across three markets and three years, they've never once let any of it get near a courtroom. Every time an operator pushed back with representation, they withdrew and moved to the next town."
He turned the monitor toward me. The pattern sat there, laid out cleanly. Boulder. Durango. Bend. And ours, the fourth town, right on schedule. "Your bar-stool intelligence was better than anything I'd have dug up in a month."
"Nadia won't take it from me," I said. "She made that clear last night. Daylight, through somebody she can stand to receive it from."
"Already in motion. I called Seth Adams yesterday. He and Cole are paying her a visit this morning." He nodded to himself. "I figured it'd land better coming from someone she trusts right now."
Someone she trusts right now, and that wasn't me.
"Is she going to fight them?" I asked. "Elevate, I mean."
"I think so. If she knows the ground is solid." He leaned back. "There's a business association meeting tonight. Word's gotten around about what Elevate's been doing. Other local operators want to talk. The collective idea she floated has been generating interest."
"She organized the meeting."
"She did. The question is whether she shows up to it." He looked hard at me. "Question is whether you've got the guts to go."
I looked out the small window at the yard beyond. A crew was loading equipment onto a flatbed, moving with the unhurried energy of people who knew what they were doing.
Ethan was out there somewhere, clipboard in hand, probably wondering why two of his crew were sitting having feelings instead of doing their jobs.
"If I show up, she'll think I'm trying to make it about us," I said.
"Maybe. Or maybe she'll see a man who stopped running." Malakai crossed his arms. "You told her you were sorry. That's a start. But sorry rebuilds nothing on its own. At some point you have to show up and do the work, even if she's not ready to let you."
"And if she never is?"
"Then you still fought for something that mattered." He said it simply, like it was obvious. "Elevate is about to walk into a room full of people they've been quietly threatening for months. Nadia built that collective. You helped her build it. Walking away now because things got complicated doesn't strike me as who you're trying to be."
I looked at this man, who understood better than most what it cost to show up for someone when you had no guarantee of how it would go.
"What time?" I said.
"Seven. Community hall."
I nodded. Stood up.
"Daemon." He stopped me at the door. "Own it when you get there. All of it. Your record, your fear, what you did wrong. Don't manage it. Own it."
I thought about what he'd said about Amelia. His wife. About deserving her, instead of just trying to protect her from his own damage.
