His voice is steady. How is his voice steady? Mine is shaking and I'm the one with the training and the body count and the reputation, and this kid—this omega who weighs a buck forty soaking wet—is standing in front of me with his chin up and his keys in his hand and his voice doesn't crack.
"I'm going to the police. I'm going to tell them everything. About the facility. About what was done to me. About the nine people still inside. You can go back inside and go to sleep or you can stand here and watch me drive away but you are not going to stop me."
"The fuck I'm not."
"You're not, Zero. You don't get to decide this for me."
"Decide this for you? Max, half those cops—"
"Then I'll go to a different precinct."
"Kline has people everywhere—"
"Then I'll go to the FBI! The state police! I'll drive to fucking DC and knock on Santos's door myself if I have to. But I am done sitting in that house while Talbot sells pieces of your family and stockpiles buyers for me like I'm livestock." He takes a breath. One. Sharp. "I heard everything tonight. Through the door. Fifteen percent. The bankruptcy. What Talbot said he'd do to me. The ruined goods line—yeah, I heard that too. All of it. Every word you've been carrying since you got home from that meeting."
The ground shifts under me.
He heard.
He was in the hallway. While we—while I was talking about factory fresh and ruined goods and Bane was talking about twelve weeks and Atlas was saying—
He heard all of it.
"You should have come in," I say. Low. Not angry. Something worse than angry. "You should have opened that door and—"
"And what? Let you shut me down again? Let Atlas say the answer is no again? Let the three of you stand in a room deciding what I'm allowed to know and what I'm allowed to do about it?" His jaw works. His eyes are wet. "I've been managed my whole life, Zero. By foster parents. By social workers. By Margot. By you. All of you. Everyone who's ever loved me has decided what I can handle and then handled it for me, and I am telling you right now–I amdonebeing handled."
The words land somewhere behind my sternum. Somewhere I don't have armor.
"This ismy fault, Zero." His voice drops. Not angry anymore—worse. Certain. "I broke this. When I ran the first time. When I didn't fight back. When I sat in that cell and waitedfor someone else to come save me instead of standing up and screaming until somebody with a badge heard me. Everything that's happening to your family—the business, the bankruptcy, Talbot—that's the messIleft behind. And I'm the only one who can clean it up."
"You didn't break anything." The words come out of me harder than I mean them to. Because it breaks my fucking heart that he truly believes this. "Max. Listen to me. You didn't break a goddamn thing. Kline was inside our operation before you ever set foot in this house. Talbot said it himself—years. This isn't your mess. This was never your mess."
"It became my mess when your family traded everything to get me out."
"That was our choice—"
"Andthisismine."
He says it like Atlas. Quiet. Final. The end of a negotiation.
I stare at him across ten feet of gravel. My foot is bleeding. The letter is in my fist. The cream paper is destroyed—crumpled, torn at one edge, the tear stains smeared beyond reading. I've ruined the first love letter anyone has ever written me and I'm standing in a driveway trying to keep its author from driving into the most dangerous thing he's ever done and I amlosing. I am losing this argument the way I've lost every argument with Max since the day I met him: completely, furiously, without a single valid counter.
Because he's right.
He's fucking right and I know he's right and the knowledge is a knife I can't pull out because it's the only thing keeping me from bleeding out entirely.
"You want to know why I can't let you go?" My voice is doing something. Breaking. Bending. Going to a place I've never taken it with anyone—not Atlas, not Bane, not the dark rooms Iused to walk into when I wanted to forget what I was. "You want to know why I would throw myself in front of your fucking car and let you run over me to try and stop you?"
"Zero—"
"Because I love you."
The words come out like I'm being fucking gutted.
Not pretty. Not poetic. Not the way Bane said it to him the other night—gentle and so full of emotion that Max nearly cried. I’m not like my brother–I never will be. This is the sound of something being ripped out of me whether I want it to or not. Like I’m being flayed alive and I can’t help but lay bare.
"I love you. I have loved you since you stood on the terrace at the wedding with champagne you didn't want and looked at me like I was the most dangerous thing you'd ever seen. And you wereright. I am dangerous. I am the worst version of everything your life was supposed to protect you from. I am an alpha with a body count and a temper and no idea how to be in a room with you without wanting to put my hands on you, and I love you, Max. I love you so much it's ruining me. It has been ruining me for months and I haven’t said it because I didn't—"
