“Do you have any family?” I asked after a quiet stretch of road. “Brothers or sisters?”
The easy smile he’d been wearing faltered. Not fully, just enough for something older to slip through.
His fingers tightened once against the steering wheel before relaxing again.
“My parents died protecting the previous Syndicate bosses,” he said quietly. The air in the car shifted.
His eyes stayed on the road, but his jaw worked once before he continued.
“Whenever the former Desmond boss, Rayla, was pregnant, enemies saw it as an opportunity. A weakness.” His thumbtapped once against the wheel. “When she was carrying Aniyah, my parents stepped in during an attack.”
He paused there. Not dramatically, but more like the memory had physically gotten caught in his throat.
“They saved her,” he finished softly, “but they didn’t survive it.”
My teeth sank into my bottom lip before I even realized I was doing it.
Rack’s hand lifted from the console, his thumb brushing lightly across my mouth.
“Don’t do that,” he murmured. “You’ll hurt yourself.”
The touch made my chest tighten strangely. He leaned back again, gaze drifting forward.
“I bounced around between some mage families but eventually ended up with the Syndicate bosses. They took me in and raised me with their children.” A faint breath escaped him, almost amused. “Everyone treated us like siblings growing up, but there was always an understanding underneath it.”
His mouth tilted faintly.
“I was supposed to stand beside one of them eventually and be their number two. A high rank in the Syndicate, only reserved for the most loyal or powerful.”
“And you ended up with Calix?”
A quieter smile crossed his face then. “Ezra and Calix practically fought over it for years.”
I blinked. “Seriously?”
His shoulders lifted slightly. “In their own way.”
With the memory, something warmer entered his expression.
“In the end, Ezra backed off first.” His eyes flicked toward me briefly. “Not because she lost, but because she knew Calix needed me more.”
There was no bitterness when he said it, only certainty, like he knew where he was meant to be.
I stared out the window for a second before quietly asking, “Do you ever get angry at them? Your parents, I mean.” His brows pinched slightly, and I elaborated. “For sacrificing themselves.”
My mind flashed unwillingly to my mother. To the alley I was found in. To blood on concrete.
Rack was silent long enough that I thought he might not answer, and I didn't blame him.
“When I was younger?” His fingers drummed once against the steering wheel. “Yeah.” A humorless breath left him.
“I hated them for it.”
Then his posture eased slowly. “But eventually…” His gaze softened, going somewhere far away. “I understood why they made that choice.”
The car smoothly rolled to a stop outside a massive shopping district before he reached into the center console.
When he turned back, a matte-black watch rested in his palm.
