“Or what?” I said, not because I wanted to be difficult, but because I had to.
“Or you will hear her cry until you come back.” No threat, just a fact. And as if on cue, I heard it—a high, thin howl, echoing through the phone, a sound engineered to pierce the skull and gut both.
My chest went cold. “I’m on my way.”
He didn’t say thank you. Didn’t say anything.
The line just went dead.
I turned on my heel, spat the lollipop stick into the gutter, and flagged the nearest cab with two fingers. The driver clocked me in the mirror and just nodded, no questions asked. I gave the address, slumped in the back seat, and tried to find my way back to hating Braham Wolfe.
It didn’t work.
All I could hear was the sound of that cry, and the way he’d said:I want you to come back.
And against every rational impulse, I wanted to.
The city rolled by, neon and sodium and rain. I licked the last taste of cherry from my teeth, and let the night pull me back toward the only place I had left to go.
The cab driver had a sports radio show playing so loud I could count the syllables through the upholstery. Every time we hit a pothole, the screen on my cell phone bounced, the pup’s pitiful howl still echoing in the back of my head even though the call had ended.
I watched the wet city bleed by, colors pooling in every gutter and low spot, and tried to count the number of times I’d promised myself I’d never do this again—run toward a crisis, instead of away.
Apparently the correct number was zero.
I could’ve asked the cab to drop me at the curb, but I told him to take me straight to the loading zone, where Wolfe’s security men were waiting. There were three of them, all built on the same assembly line as their boss: wide in the shoulders, wide in the jaw, and so silent you could use them as insulation.
The first one nodded, didn’t ask my name. The second opened the door and held it with the kind of exaggerated patience that says hurry up, but do it on your own time.
I did.
Inside, the world changed temperature. The lobby was pure hush—polished marble, glass art installations, a fresh-cut pine tree so perfect I wanted to check for a “Made in China” sticker. The only sound was the tread of my boots and the soft, infant scream leaking down from the elevator shaft, bouncing off every hard surface.
The sound wasn’t normal. It was the kind of noise you hear in a disaster zone, from a kid who’s lost the one person they ever trusted to show up again.
The elevator was already waiting, doors open, interior cleaned to the point that it smelled like a new car and ozone. I stepped inside, sucked the lollipop so hard the sugar stung my tongue, and braced myself for the long ride up.
Forty-one floors, no stops. The baby’s cry tracked me the whole way, ratcheting higher as I got closer. I cracked my neck, rolled my shoulders, and tried to find my inner calm.
It wasn’t there.
There was only the hollow, anxious echo of that sound, and the steadily rising certainty that when I walked out onto thepenthouse floor, I was going to see Braham Wolfe and want—something.
The doors opened on a wall of sound. The pup’s howl vibrated the window glass, drew a line straight down my spine, and did not let up when I stepped into the suite. There was a medical team, two people in scrubs and one in a white coat, their faces showing polite helplessness.
The pup was on the conference table, howling. The second she saw me, her breath hitched and she went silent, a full stop like someone had yanked the cord on a chainsaw.
The med team stared. One of them, a woman with hair in a silver bun, shot me a look so full of hope and suspicion I wanted to apologize on behalf of the entire species.
The pup blinked once, then shifted back into a baby and reached for me, opening and closing her hand in a gesture so deliberate it made my heart lurch.
I scooped her up, careful as you would with a grenade. She fit into my arm, perfectly and without complaint, the way a child is supposed to fit if you ignore every warning about not letting them get attached.
The baby sighed, burrowed her face into the fabric of my jacket, and made a tiny, snuffling snore. The sound, after all that howling, was as loud as a punch to the chest.
The med team’s collective exhale could have moved furniture.
I looked up and found Braham watching me from the other end of the table. He was alone—no security, no business associates, not even Ashe Wilson lurking in the background.
