Forgotten Blood

What He Already Knows

Marcus was leaning against the front steps of her building when Lena turned the corner, and the sight of him there nearly stopped her heart outright.

He never came here. He'd never even asked for the address, not directly, which she'd mistaken once for respect instead of what it actually was — patience, waiting for the moment it would matter more to know.

"You found me," she said, keeping her voice level. Panic was a tell. Tells got punished.

"I find everyone eventually. It's the job." He didn't move from the steps, didn't bother pretending this was a coincidence. "Damien Sterling. Outside a pharmacy. You want to explain that, or should I?"

So that was it. Someone had been watching, and not just her — him too, apparently, close enough to report back fast.

"He recognized me from the gala. We talked for two minutes."

"You let the second brother corner you alone, somewhere off script, somewhere I didn't put you." His tone hadn't risen at all, which was somehow worse than yelling. "Do you understand what happens if he starts asking questions before we're ready for him to?"

"Nothing happened."

"Everything happens, Lena. That's the part you keep refusing to learn." He finally pushed off the steps, closing the distance between them slowly, the way he liked to close distance, like he was the only variable in the room that got to move freely. "And now I know where you actually live. That's new information too. Funny how much I find out the second you start getting careless."

Something cold dropped through her stomach. This building. This street. Behind one of these doors, three floors up, her mother was sleeping off another bad day, and Marcus was standing here naming the address like a threat he hadn't decided yet whether to use.

"This has nothing to do with the job," Lena said, and her voice came out sharper than she intended. "You don't get to know everything about me. Some places aren't yours to walk into."

Marcus tilted his head, studying her the way he studied a mark who'd just said something useful without meaning to. "Everything about you is mine. I built you. You don't get to draw a line now and call it privacy."

"You didn't build me." The words left her before she'd decided to say them, and once they were out she didn't take them back. "You found me when I had nothing else. That's not the same thing."

For a moment neither of them spoke. A car alarm went off somewhere down the block and neither of them flinched at it, both too busy holding still in a silence that felt like the floor of something about to give way.

"Careful," Marcus said finally, quiet now, which was always when he meant it most. "I let things go because they're useful, Lena. The day you stop being useful is the day I stop being careful about what I do with what I know."

He walked past her toward the street, brushing close enough that she caught the same cold cologne he'd worn the first night she met him, the smell that used to mean rescue and now just meant warning.

She didn't watch him go. She climbed the stairs instead, three flights, key already shaking slightly in her hand by the second floor.

Grace was awake when she let herself in, propped against the pillows with the lamp on low.

"You're shaking," her mother said.

"It's cold out."

"It's June." Grace held her gaze a beat too long, the way she had since Lena was small, the look that used to mean I know you're lying and I'm choosing not to fight you on it tonight. "Whoever that was outside. Tell me he doesn't know where we live."

Lena sat down hard on the edge of the bed, the question landing somewhere she didn't have an answer ready for.

"He knows now," she said.

Grace didn't say anything for a long time. She just reached over, turned off the lamp, and held her daughter's hand in the dark like that alone might be enough to keep the door locked.

It wasn't. Both of them knew it wasn't. Neither one said so out loud.