He came here anyway. Because Atlas doesn't know how to not show up to a table. Even when the table is a coffin.
Bane is beside me. Pocket square. Glasses. The legitimate face. His left hand is flat on the table and the tendons are standing out like bridge cables. His nostrils flared once when we walked through the main floor—just once, the involuntary scent-read of an alpha passing through a room soaked in omega—and then his face went to stone. He hasn't mentioned it. Won't. But the jaw is doing the micro-clench, and I know part of what he's clenching against is the air in this building and what it reminds him of.
A facility. A cell. A girl named Wren behind a locked door.
Max being a number, damn near sold off for rich fucking pervert alphas who would have torn him apart.
Yeah. I'm clenching against that too.
"Gentlemen." Talbot lifts his water glass. No wine—the venue doesn't serve at this hour. Another layer of the power move. He controls the setting, the clock, even what we drink. So much for neutral fucking ground. "Thank you for coming. I appreciate the initiative."
The initiative. Like we're junior partners requesting a performance review.
Atlas tips his glass. Doesn't drink. "We asked for this meeting because there's a problem with the boundaries of our arrangement, and we'd like to resolve it before it becomes something neither of us can manage."
Good. Steady. The performance is excellent. If I didn't know better, I'd believe it.
Talbot's mouth curves. The warm smile, widening. "I wasn't aware there was a problem."
"Then you haven't been paying attention to what your people have been doing in our territory." Atlas sets both hands flat on the table. Open. Controlled. Smart move to put the blame on Talbot’s employees, not him directly. "The deal we struck gave you specific concessions. The coastal corridor. Port connectivity. Revenue share. We honored every term. Your organization has been operatingwelloutside those lines."
"Outside the lines," Talbot repeats. Pleasantly. Like he's tasting the phrase.
"Charleston," Bane says. "The management contract was ours. Your people acquired it three weeks ago through a shell we've since traced back to Kline holdings. That wasn't part of our agreement."
Good. Specific. Documented. Bane brought receipts because Bane always brings receipts.
Talbot doesn't deny it. Doesn't even blink.
"Savannah," Bane continues. "Dock access renegotiated under a Kline subsidiary last month. Again—not part of our arrangement. And the Pittsburgh route I spent a week setting up was running on infrastructure your organization had already acquired underneath us." His voice stays level but I can hear the crack underneath. Hairline. Talbot probably can't. "We came here to talk about lines, Talbot. Because you've been crossing them."
Talbot looks at Bane for a long beat. Then at Atlas. Then he reaches into his breast pocket and pulls out a folded piece of paper. Places it on the table. Slides it across to Atlas with two fingers.
"You're right," he says. "I have been crossing them."
Atlas picks up the paper. Unfolds it. Reads.
His face doesn't change.
His hand does.
The smallest tremor. The tips of his fingers. The paper shaking a quarter-inch before his hand corrects and goes steady again. A blink-and-you'd-miss-it loss of control.
I saw it.
Bane saw it. His thumb presses into the table hard enough to leave a dent.
Talbot definitely saw it.
"That's not a list of violations, Atlas. That's a list of acquisitions." Talbot folds his hands on the table. The warm smile hasn't moved but the thing behind it has sharpened—a blade rotating behind glass. "Charleston. Savannah. Your Pittsburgh route. Your contact in Cleveland. Three ofyourshell companies on the eastern seaboard. Two suppliers you didn't even know I'd turned." He pauses. "I haven't been crossing your lines. I've been erasing them."
The room goes quiet. Through the wall, the vacuum is still running. Someone drops a bucket on the main floor and the clang carries through the brick. The faint sweet residue of last night's omega heat pulses in the walls around us like a second heartbeat I didn't ask to feel.
"You've been doing this for months," Atlas says. Not a question. His voice is flat. The performance is slipping. I can hear the ground shifting underneath his composure.
Talbot tilts his head. The warm smile does something worse—it softens. Almost pitying.
"Years, Atlas."
