“Why? Too unfair?”
“Yes.”
The honesty stings.
He takes a breath, visibly forcing control. “Lenrog’s death changes everything. Ron is not only dangerous now. He is positioned to take resources, men, supply lines, weapons. The flood was not random. It was a message and a distraction. I have to understand who remains loyal to Lenrog, who follows Ron, and who can be stopped before more people are hurt.”
“You have to?”
“Yes.”
“Because you’re what now? The new Savio Lenrog?”
His expression goes cold with pain. “No.”
“Then why does it look like that?”
“Because sometimes preventing a war means standing in ugly rooms long enough to learn where the knives are.”
“That sounds like something Lenrog would say.”
He recoils as if I struck him.
The rain lashes against the awning. Cars hiss past on the street. Somewhere behind Kauss, Arturo watches us with unreadable eyes.
I lower my voice. “I searched hospitals for you.”
His face breaks.
Not fully. Kauss never breaks fully where anyone can see. But enough.
“I am sorry,” he says.
“I thought you drowned.”
“I am sorry.”
“I thought the last thing I said to you was get out.”
His throat works.
“And then I saw you alive, and for one second I was so relieved I couldn’t stand up straight. Then I saw them.” I gesture past him toward Lenrog’s men. “And now I don’t know what I’m looking at.”
“You are looking at a man trying to stop Ron.”
“I wanted to be looking at the man who loved my ridiculous magnets and burned his hand fixing my display case and slept in my bed like he finally believed he deserved warmth.”
“You are.”
“No.” My voice cracks. “That man would have called.”
Kauss’s hands open helplessly at his sides. “I made the wrong choice.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“Do you?”
