“Aw, so youdon’thate it!”
I can practically hear him rolling his eyes from the other side of the line.
There’s another stretch of silence before he says, “I told you I didn’t know of any enemies I might’ve had at the time. I was wrong.”
My tapping fingers go still, and I hold my breath. I don’t want him to know the truth. I need him to believe the version he can understand. Because no one would understand why I’m doing all of this for my kidnapper.
Someone came after me. Someone usedhimto get to theBellroses. Someone humiliated Malcolm and the Institute by taking me right out from under them. Maybe they’re still out there, plotting their next attack.
That’swhere he needs to believe my motivation lies.
“I thought I could take care of them without you ever knowing,” I admit.
“Who do you think sent you that tip two years ago?”
I let out a disbelieving noise. “You?”
“That’s when I noticed them popping back up. I could tell you had a desire to do something about it, so I dropped a few breadcrumbs and have been watching since then. You’ve been asking interesting questions of interesting people. You built a workstation powerful enough to simulate half a corporate network and bought more encrypted storage than most startups use in a year.”
All paid for with private jobs and cash transfers split so thin they looked like static. No Bellrose money. Not anything that Malcolm could freeze or question or use to pull me back under his roof. Every dollar I’ve made from people like Harrison went into this machine, storage, servers. Into the thing that was supposed to buy me one clean ending.
I rub a hand over my face. “Okay, when you say it like that, it sounds a little concerning.”
“It is concerning,” he says calmly.
“I prefer the termambitious.”
“You also purchased custom FPGA boards from a broker in Prague.”
I freeze. “That was supposed to be anonymous.”
“Nothing is anonymous if the right people are watching.”
“Well,” I say, pinching the bridge of my nose, “good to know no one’s besting me at my operational security. Turns out my uncle’s just a serious stalker.”
He exhales a quiet laugh.
“On top of all that,” he says, voice settling into something more serious, “I know you, Cason. You disappear when something matters to you. You left the Institute, and you’ve only been taking independent projects.”
Because independent meansmine. There’s no one asking why I need a component shipped through three countries, no one leaning over my shoulder pretending concern is different from control.
My gaze drifts back to the lines of code scrolling across my monitor.
“You’ve always been methodical,” he says. “When you want something done, you don’t rush. You build the tools first. You test them. You refine them until they’re perfect. You’re persistent and meticulous.”
Felix shifts beside my keyboard, tail flicking lazily.
Malcolm goes on, almost conversationally. “Now you’re going after them. You’re trying to destroy what they’ve built. You’ve dedicated the last four years of your life to it.”
He says it like he understands. Like this is about what happened to me in that basement, about the Institute being violated, abouthisfailure, about every headline that made us look weak. About a Bellrose finally striking back.
He believes I’m doing this because someone took me, not that I’m doing this because someone tookhimawayfromme.
Closure is probably a myth, but myths still give people something to chase.
“Stop making it sound so unhealthy.”
“It is unhealthy,” he says.
