The word drops into the room like a body.
"I've been inside your operation for years. Long before your convenient little stepbrother showed up. Long before our last arrangement. The routes, the contacts, the shells—I've been moving through them since before Richard stepped back." He gestures at the paper. Like he’s casually showing us the X-ray of our own broken bones. "What you thought was market pressure was me. Patient. Methodical. One piece at a time."
He pauses. Lets it land.
"Max was a stroke of luck, I'll admit. An unmated omega falling into the lap of a family I was already dismantling—that was agift. It gave me leverage I didn't need but was happy to use. And once your family handed me the concessions to get him back?" He spreads his hands. "You opened every door I'd been picking at for years. The deal didn't start my acquisition, Atlas. It finished it."
He picks up his water. Sips. Sets it down.
"The summary is forty pages. I'll have it sent."
Atlas stares at the paper. I watch him read it again. His eyes moving across the lines, and I know what he's doing—he's looking for the angle. The counter. The thread he can pull that nobody else sees. The speed was always the thing with Atlas. Hiseyes would move once, settle, and the answer would come out of his mouth like he'd had it in his pocket for weeks.
His eyes move. They don't settle.
"Our arrangement gave youspecificterritory," Atlas says. Measured. Holding the frame. "What you've done goes well beyond that. It's an act of aggression against a family that honored its end of the deal."
"Your arrangement," Talbot says, leaning back, "was a formality. A way to accelerate what was already happening. I would have owned everything on that list within eighteen months regardless. Your family handing me the corridor and the ports just saved me the trouble of taking them quietly." He picks up his water again. Sips. Sets it down on the ring it already made. "You honored your end. I appreciate that. Your father would be proud. But let's not pretend the deal was anything other than what it was—you buying time you didn't know you'd already run out of."
"And what comes next," Bane says, "is what, exactly? You've gutted our operation without a conversation. Without warning. You could have come to us. You could have renegotiated. Instead you did it behind our backs like a—"
"Like a businessman," Talbot finishes. Mild. Almost kind. "Which is what I am. And what your family used to be, before sentiment got in the way."
Bane's hand curls on the table. Slow. The knuckles going white by degrees.
"What I'm proposing is simple," Talbot continues. "A merger. Operational integration. Your distribution network—what's left of it—runs under Kline management. Your family retains a minority stake. Twenty percent, no–fifteen. Revenue share, no operational control."
Fifteen percent. The same number he asked for in that dining room when Max was strapped to a cross behind glass.Same number. Different table. No glass this time. No cross. Just arithmetic.
We are being bought. Not with a gun. With a fucking spreadsheet. In the back room of a sex club that smells like the worst thing that ever happened to the person I love.
"That's not a merger," I grit out, barely able to keep my voice steady. "That's a leash."
Everyone looks at me.
Atlas's jaw tightens. One millimeter. The tell that meansI told you not to speak. He did. In the car. I fucking hate when he managed me like that:Do not speak unless I indicate. Do not react. Do not give him anything.
I heard him. I just never fucking agreed.
Because this sorry excuse for a man just called the thing our dead mother's hands helped build—the thing Atlas took over at twenty-three, the thing Bane bleeds for every time he steps foot in a warehouse, the thing I have broken men's fingers and done much, much worse to protect—he just called it aminority stake. That’s what we’re being reduced down to.
Like we’re tenants in our own house.
Talbot's eyes settle on me. The warm smile comes back. Full wattage. "Zero. I was wondering when you'd join the conversation."
"I wasn't going to. But I'm having trouble sitting here while you dress up a hostile takeover in merger language and pretend the venue makes it civilized."
"The venue is neutral ground. Nothing more."
"The venue is a place where omegas get passed around like party favors, Talbot. You picked it on purpose. Don't insult me."
His associate's pen hesitates. A micro-pause. Then it keeps moving.
Talbot doesn't blink. "I picked it because it's discreet. Because neither of our names is on the lease. And because the owner owes me a favor, which means no one will remember we were here." He sips his water again. "But if the atmosphere offends you, I'm happy to reschedule at a venue of your choosing. Provided you can find one your family still owns."
Bane's jaw flexes. I feel Atlas's knee press against mine under the table.Enough.
"What I'm saying, Talbot, is that the last time you held leverage over this family, my brother"—I nod at Bane without looking—"walked into your building and got our boy out from the inside. So when you sit here telling us our options are narrow, I want you to remember who you're talking to."
