"You're not." He steps into the room, moving slowly, like approaching a wounded animal. "What happened with Celeste?"
I laugh, and the sound is hollow. "She told me the truth. I didn't want to hear it."
He stops a few feet away, close enough to talk but not crowding. He knows me well enough for that.
"What truth?"
"That I've been treating her the way Luciano treated me." The words come out flat. Dead. "Control disguised as protection. Choices taken away for her own good. The same justifications, the same assumptions, just wrapped in prettier language."
Marcellus is quiet for a long moment. I can feel him studying me, assessing the damage.
"She said that?"
"She didn't have to say it in those exact words. She compared me to him. Said I told her about what he did, then turned around and did the same thing." I stare at my hands, still trembling. "She's right."
"Maximus."
"She's right, Marcellus. I benched her because I was afraid of losing her. I took away her autonomy because my fear mattered more to me than her choices. That's exactly what he did. Exactly. I've become him."
Marcellus is quiet for a moment. "No. You haven't."
I look up sharply.
"Luciano enslaved you for a hundred and fifty years," he says. "Tortured you. Forced you to do unspeakable things. You benched a woman from field duty because you were scared for her safety." His voice is flat, unsparing. "Those aren't the same, and calling them the same insults what you survived."
"But the pattern."
"The pattern is there," he agrees. "You took her choices. Used protection as justification. That's real, and it's a problem. But you're not a monster for being afraid. You're a man who learnedthe wrong lessons from his trauma and is applying them badly." He holds my gaze. "The question isn't whether you're Luciano. You're not. The question is whether you're going to keep repeating the one part of him that stuck."
I let his words wash over me, weighing them.
"What are you going to do?" he finally asks.
"I don't know." I drag my hands through my hair. "Words won't fix this. I already apologized for the bait situation, and then I made it worse. Another apology would be meaningless."
"So don't apologize. Do something."
I look up at him. "What?"
"You took something from her. Give it back." He crosses his arms. "Not with words. With action. Reinstate her field status. Give her the access you've been withholding. Show her you meant what you said about respecting her choices."
"And if she doesn't believe me? If she thinks it's just another manipulation?"
"Then you keep proving it. Day after day, choice after choice, until she sees the pattern change." He pauses. "Or you give up and let her go. Those are your options."
The thought of letting her go sends a spike of pain through my chest.
"I can't." I stop. Start again. "I don't want to lose her."
"Then stop holding on so tight you crush her." His voice softens slightly. "I've watched you for two centuries. I've seen you control everything around you because control feels safe. But control isn't love, Maximus. It's fear wearing a mask. And she sees through it."
Before I can respond, his comm unit buzzes. He glances at it, and his expression hardens.
"What?" I ask.
"Konstantin. His people hit the Decatur supply depot twentyminutes ago. Burned it to the ground. No casualties, the staff evacuated in time, but we lost the entire stock."
The Decatur depot. One of our secondary distribution points. A significant loss, but not crippling.
