"Blake," he says, one hand settling over the center of Blake's chest. "They can hear you downstairs."
Blake goes rigid under his palm.
Grayson stays there, close but not crowding him. "The children need steady. Luca does too."
Blake looks at me. Whatever he sees makes his mouth close around the argument. Grayson guides him back to the bed, not forcing, not soft enough to be ignored. Blake sits beside me with his body angled toward the door, and Grayson places water in his hand before he can turn the fear into movement again.
"Drink," Grayson says. "Then sit with him."
Blake's fingers tighten around the glass. He drinks because Grayson's watching and because I'm watching too. Only after that does Grayson come to me, tucking the blanket more securely around my legs before sitting close enough for his thigh to press against mine. He doesn't ask for the whole storyimmediately. He gives me the bowl first, warm against my hands, then waits until I take a small bite before his forehead touches my temple.
"Maceo's got them downstairs," he says. "Rosalie's calmer. Samuel's talking through the hallway step by step. James is sitting beside him and correcting the order when he needs to."
My breath breaks on something too sharp to be relief. "They shouldn't have had to do that."
"No." Grayson's hand moves over my shoulder, slow and firm through the blanket. "They shouldn't have had to. But Samuel got you moving. James stayed with you. Rosalie called for safety. They did what children do when they trust their people to listen."
I close my eyes, and the hallway comes back anyway. Dorian's voice. The small correction of his step that wasn't enough. The way my fear made itself visible before I gave it permission. "I froze first."
"You left with them."
"I froze."
"And then you left with them," Grayson says, not arguing, not smoothing it away. He keeps both truths in the room and doesn't let one erase the other.
Blake makes a rough sound beside me. Grayson's hand leaves my shoulder only long enough to settle on Blake's wrist. A reminder. A tether. Blake stays seated, but the anger in him's gone colder, deeper, settling into some private place where decisions are made.
"There's no proof," I say, because that's the part I can't stop circling. "He was careful. If I repeat his words, they sound like questions about charity. If I say he blocked the elevator, he moved. If I say he scared the children, he can say he was speaking gently and they were tired. It gets smaller once I say it out loud."
Blake looks at me then, fully.
Before he can answer, the door opens again and Luther comes in without making the room rearrange around him. He closes the door, looks once at Blake, once at Grayson, then at me. He doesn't ask what happened. He crosses to the foot of the bed and sits on the floor with his back against the frame, near enough for me to touch and far enough that the choice remains mine.
For a while, I don't move. Then I slide one foot out from under the blanket and rest it against his thigh.
Maceo covers it with his hand.
The contact's warm and undemanding. It doesn't ask me to explain. It doesn't ask me to prove. Downstairs, the movie hums faintly through the floor, and Samuel's voice rises once before lowering again. The house keeps breathing around us, shaken but intact.
I look at Blake, at the hard line of his jaw and the water glass still in his hand. I look at Grayson, steady beside me, and at Maceo on the floor with his palm over my foot. None of them are looking for the clean version. None of them need me to make Dorian's threat simple enough to prosecute before they believe it happened.
"I know what I felt," I say.
Blake reaches beneath the blanket and threads his fingers through mine, careful where he'd checked my wrists too tightly before. His hand's still cold. His voice isn't.
"Then I believe you."
13
Blake
Maceo hasn't sat down once. He keeps moving through the living room in a slow, methodical circuit, checking the locks, the alarm panel, the patio door, the narrow line where the blinds meet the window frame. Nothing about him looks frantic. That'd be easier to stop. Maceo doesn't panic in ways that ask to be interrupted. He turns worry into procedure, into quiet hands and steady steps and the kind of silence people mistake for calm because they don't know how hard he's listening.
I'm on the sofa with a tablet balanced against my thigh, pretending to read code I stopped understanding ten minutes ago. The words have blurred into blocks of light, and my heart gives one small, irritated flutter every time my body reminds me that rest isn't a negotiation I can win by ignoring it. Luca sits at the other end of the sofa with both hands wrapped around a cup of tea that's gone cold. He hasn't drunk it. I haven't commented. Tonight feels full of things we're not commenting on because naming every wound would take more energy than any of us have left.
Maceo checks the patio door again.
Luca sees me watching him. His eyes move from my face to Maceo's hand on the lock, then to the hallway Maceo keeps tracking every few seconds. The look Luca gives me is small, but I understand it immediately. We've both seen Maceo hold a room before. We've both watched him become a wall when danger gets too close. This is different. He's not only protecting us. He's standing outside the warmth he's trying to preserve, as if the safest place for him is still the edge.
