CHAPTER FOUR - What Three Men Look Like at Breakfast
1115 Words
I decide at six in the morning, lying rigid in the dark, that if I am going to survive this I need information. The kind I find myself.
I hear movement in the kitchen at half past seven and I am up fast, splashing water on my face, yanking on real clothes, the cold tile under my bare feet the only honest thing in this entire apartment. Armor, even if it's only fabric. I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror on the way out, a woman who looks more composed than she has any right to feel, and decide that will have to be enough.
All three of them are already there.
I stop in the doorway, my pulse climbing, taking in the scene before any of them adjust to being watched. This is the first time I have seen the three of them together without the formality of last night pressing down on the room, and the difference is immediate. Marcus is reading a document, his coffee gone cold beside him, untouched, his eyes moving across the page with the kind of focus that suggests the rest of the world has simply stopped existing for him. Damian scrolls his phone with sharp, aggressive focus, jaw tight, his thumb moving fast enough that I cannot imagine he is actually reading anything. Luca stands at the stove, cracking eggs into a pan, moving easy and comfortable in a way the other two are not, like this kitchen belongs to him specifically and the rest of them are simply allowed to exist in it.
"Morning," he says, glancing up, a spatula in one hand. "Eggs?"
"Please." I drop into the seat one over from Marcus, my whole body still wound tight, and reach for the coffee pot before anyone can offer to pour it for me.
I watch them while I wait for the eggs. These are not men comfortable with each other, not exactly, not in the way of people who enjoy sharing a meal. There is no easy conversation, no small talk drifting between them. But there is no real tension either, nothing crackling under the surface, just the deep, worn-in rhythm of people who have shared rooms for years, moving around each other without needing to ask, reaching past one shoulder for the salt, shifting an elbow two inches without looking up.
Used to each other. That is different from comfortable. Comfortable is something you choose fresh every day. This is just what is left after enough years of practice.
"The wifi password Damian gave me yesterday didn't work," I say, my voice sharper than I intend, cutting into the quiet.
Damian doesn't look up. "I know."
I straighten in my seat. "You gave me a wrong password."
"Guest network. Currently suspended."
"Why."
"Because it is."
I whip around to look at Luca, half expecting him to soften it, to add some explanation that makes this sound less deliberate. Luca's eyes flick to Marcus first, that small instinctive check, quick enough that I almost miss it, and my stomach drops at what it tells me about where the real authority in this kitchen actually sits.
"Marcus," I say, my voice rising slightly, loud enough that it cuts through the sound of the eggs sizzling behind me.
He glances up. He looks back down. He turns a page like nothing happened, like I am simply background noise in a room he has already finished assessing.
That silence costs more than a cruel word ever could. I sit with it for a moment, feeling the heat climb up the back of my neck, swallowing the urge to push harder right now and getting nowhere for the effort.
Luca slides a glass of juice toward me, his voice gentler now, like he felt the temperature shift in the room and wants to bring it back down. "Do you always get up this early?"
"When I have things to think about."
"What are you thinking about."
"My fridge." The words come out before I can stop them, my throat tightening unexpectedly. "Half a block of cheese. A yogurt that was already close to the date. I'm thinking about whether anyone will deal with it or I'll come home in a year to a biology experiment."
"I can have someone go to your apartment."
"That's not the point." My voice cracks, just slightly, and I hate that it does, hate that the smallest, stupidest detail of my old life is the thing that finally gets through my armor.
"What is the point."
I stare down at my plate, my chest aching, the eggs going cold in front of me. My whole life, condensed into a sentence. One bedroom apartment. Freelance income. An almost-empty fridge and a yogurt I never got around to throwing out. Nothing that would make anyone look twice. Nothing that would make the news if it disappeared quietly, without fuss, without anyone outside Zoey ever really noticing.
I wonder, with a cold drop in my stomach, if that is exactly why he chose me. Small enough to vanish without consequence.
"Never mind."
Marcus finishes his coffee in one final swallow and stands abruptly, already half turned before his chair finishes sliding back, the document tucked under one arm. He pulls his phone from his pocket as he reaches the doorway, his thumb moving across the screen, and his voice carries clearly through the door he doesn't fully close behind him.
"She doesn't know yet. Keep it that way."
The door clicks shut.
My whole body goes still. The kitchen keeps moving around me, Luca's voice somewhere beside me, the scrape of a fork against a plate, the low hum of the refrigerator, none of it reaching me through the loud ringing that has started up in my ears.
Keep it that way.
I snap back when I realize Luca is waiting for an answer to something I missed entirely, his eyebrows raised slightly, watching me with the particular attentiveness of someone who noticed exactly what just happened and is choosing, for now, not to mention it. "Sorry. What?"
"More coffee?"
"Yes. Please." My hand is not quite steady when I push the cup toward him, and I see him notice that too.
I stare at the door Marcus disappeared through, my eggs forgotten, the cold coffee in front of me suddenly the least important thing in the room.
There is something they are keeping from me on purpose.
Something big enough that he shut a door over it, lowered his voice for it, gave specific instructions about it before the sun was even fully up.
I am going to find out exactly what it is.
- Writer
