"Okay."
"He's mortified. About what happened. He—"
"Mom. You don't have to convince me. If you're happy, I'm happy."
She's working on it. I can hear it in her voice—the gap between the son she imagined and the son she got. Four men in a house. A bond she still doesn't fully understand. A life that looks nothing like the one she planned when she drove three hours to a foster home in a car she couldn't afford to fill with gas and took my hand and saidyou're coming with me now.
She calls every day. She’s putting her life back together. That's enough for now.
∞∞∞
The business is clean.
That's Bane's word for it—clean. What he means is legitimate. What he means is the thing he's been working toward since before I met any of them: the Graves operation running on a product people actually want, sold through channels that don't involve Talbot Kline or offshore accounts or men in suits who never give their real names.
The knot suppressant and deflater—the one Atlas used that night in the hotel, the one I didn't have a name for until Bane explained it to me with a straight face and a PowerPoint presentation that I will never let him live down—is a hit. Massive. The adult entertainment industry can't get enough of it.The medical applications alone are worth more than everything Kline's operation ever generated.
After the raid, after Kline's lieutenants went down and Kline himself was picked up trying to cross into Canada in the trunk of a rented Audi, the Graves stock rebounded so hard that Atlas actually laughed. He was so elated he looked a little manic.
They bought Richard out. Bane handled the paperwork. Atlas handled the numbers. Zero sat in the room during the meeting and said nothing and didn't need to, because Richard took one look at his sons’ faces and signed everything Atlas put in front of him without reading it.
They haven't spoken to their father since.
Zero said he'd kill him if he ever had to look at him again. I don't think he's joking. I also don't think he'd actually do it. But I'm not going to test it.
∞∞∞
I get back to the house late after a full day on campus.
I'm on the couch with the notebook in my lap—the same one I started a year ago, the one I wrote the letters in, the one that has held every thought I couldn't say out loud until I could. It's almost full. The pages are soft at the edges from handling, the spine cracked, the cover stained with coffee rings and one smear of Bane's engine grease from the time he picked it up to see what I was writing and I all but tackled him.
Atlas is reading in the armchair across from me. Actual reading—a book, paper, not a screen. He does this more often these days. Takes off the suit. Puts on clothes that make himlook like a person instead of a corporation. I caught him in sweatpants once at four in the afternoon and almost called 911.
Bane is in the kitchen making something that smells like garlic and butter and fresh herbs. He cooks now. Not just cooks—he'sgoodat it. Terrifyingly good. The man who spent years reading inventory reports and managing logistics picked up a knife six months ago and turned out to have the hands for it. He makes his own pasta. He braises things. He made a lemon tart from scratch last week that was so good Zero ate three slices and then denied it. The irony of the lemon tart still makes me giggle. Atlas asked him where he'd been hiding this and Bane just shrugged and said he likes following a process. Of course he does. Bane has always been the one who finds the system in the chaos and makes it work.
He’s like his oldest brother that way.
Zero is on the floor at my feet. His back against the couch. My fingers in his hair. He's on his phone, scrolling something, and every few minutes he tilts his head back into my hand like a cat demanding more pressure.
I give it. He hums.
This is what it looks like. The four of us. On any given night. In a house with our names on it.
No one is hiding. No one is locked in a room down the hall hoping no one notices them. No one is counting pills or tracking the days until the next heat or rehearsing lies about why they flinch when someone gets too close.
Atlas looks up from his book. Catches me staring.
"What?" he says.
"Nothing."
"You're staring."
My lips pull wide into a smile. "I'm appreciating."
The corner of his mouth lifts. He goes back to his book. But his foot extends across the gap between the armchair and the couch and rests against mine. The bond hums.
Zero tilts his head back again. Looks up at me from the floor with those dark eyes and that mouth and the expression that is either about to start something or finish it.
