Malik wasn’t alone.
He might not be able to look at Indy, but that’s what makes were for. To be there for you when you felt at your lowest.
Uncurling from the chair, Indy stood and crossed the room, approaching Malik. His make tense, gazing out the same window as Indy had.
“Look at me.” He touched his mate’s arm, giving it a light squeeze until Malik met his gaze. “How do we handle this?
Chapter Four
They failed to come up with a plan.
Malik stood with his back against the fireplace mantel, his arms crossed, and watched everyone try to find an answer that wasn’t there.
Nobody spoke for so long that the refrigerator cycling on in the kitchen became the loudest thing in the house.
For months Malik had carried this problem alone. He’d turned it over in the dark, mapped every angle, looked for exits, and found none he trusted. He’d told himself he was protecting his team by keeping them out of it. Standing here now, watching the people he trusted try to find a solution and come up empty, he understood that what he’d actually been doing was protecting his pride.
Indy had returned to the armchair, looking at the middle of the room the same way everyone else was, his brows drawn together in a slight furrow, his lower lip caught between his teeth before he released it.
He’d asked the right questions. Both of them. Malik had noticed that, even through the discomfort of standing in front of people he cared about and saying the thing he’d been unable to say for months. The number and then the harder question underneath the number. Whether the money had ever actually been the point.
Malik didn’t know the answer to that one. That was the truth of it, and Indy had taken the honest answer without flinching.
“There’s nothing to plan yet,” Grayson said finally. His voice was even, not dismissive, just accurate. “We need more information before we can move.”
Colton set his phone face-down on the cushion beside him. “Which means we wait for them to make another move.”
“Or we find them first,” Reese said.
“How?” Colton looked at him. “We don’t have a location. We don’t know how many there are. We don’t know if paying the debt actually ends it.”
The room went quiet again.
Malik had believed that if he could just get ahead of this, just find the right angle, he could solve it before anyone else had to know.
What he understood now, standing here with his team unable to find a path forward either, was that some problems didn’t have a clean solution waiting to be discovered.
Some problems just had to be faced head-on.
That wasn’t comforting. But it was real.
“We table it,” Grayson said. “For tonight. Everyone stays alert, we keep the perimeter watched, and tomorrow we start looking for information.” He looked at Malik. “We’ll figure it out.”
The words were simple. Grayson didn’t load them with anything extra, didn’t make a production of the forgiveness buried inside them. That was Grayson’s way, and Malik felt it land somewhere low in his ribcage.
Colton stood and stretched, his arms going overhead. “I’ll take first watch.”
“I’ll relieve you at two,” Reese said.
Everyone begun to file out, people moving toward other rooms or toward bed, the dispersal of a group that had reached the end of what could be done in one night. Ryan disappeared into the kitchen. Sonny said something soft to Reese that Malik didn’t catch. Grayson paused beside Malik on his way out and put one hand briefly on his shoulder, a single point of contact, and then he was gone.
Malik stayed in the living room for several minutes after the last person left.
It felt strange to finally come clean. He’d been carrying the debt and the shame and the grinding weight of secrecy for so long.
Saying it out loud in front of people who mattered hadn’t destroyed anything. The room hadn’t collapsed. Grayson hadn’t looked at him with contempt. Reese and Colton hadn’t washed their hands of him.
Nobody had said anything that felt like the end of something.
