Chapter 12 — Not a Joke
1134 Words
Marlowe
Reid was waiting for me by the fence line the next morning, which told me he'd either gotten braver overnight or stupider, and I hadn't decided which yet.
"You look like you didn't sleep." He said it pleasant, conversational, like we were two friends catching up instead of two people who both knew exactly what that note in my boot had actually meant.
"Funny how that happens when someone threatens you and signs it with a question mark instead of their name."
"Nobody threatened anybody." His smile didn't move, but his eyes did — quick, assessing, cataloguing my reaction the way he'd been cataloguing everything about me since the first day I walked through that gate. "I asked a question. You're the one who decided it was a threat."
"You nailed my boots to the floor, Reid."
"I told you. Wasn't me."
"Then who was it?"
"Someone who wanted your attention." He shrugged, easy, unbothered, and stepped half a pace closer, close enough that I had to actively resist the urge to step back and give him exactly the reaction he was fishing for. "I'm just the one who left the note. You should be more worried about who else in this den is paying that kind of attention to you and not leaving evidence behind."
My whole stomach turned over cold. "Is that a threat too?"
"That's a favor." Something sharpened behind his easy tone, the mask slipping just enough to show what was actually underneath it. "I know something's off about you, Finch. I don't know what yet. But I will. And when I do, you're going to wish you'd told me yourself instead of making me find out the hard way."
"Is there a problem here."
Neither of us had heard him approach, which told me everything about how quiet a man King's size could actually move when he wanted to. He didn't raise his voice. He never needed to. Reid's whole posture changed the second that voice hit the air, spine straightening, smile flattening into something more careful.
"No problem," Reid said. "Just talking."
"Didn't look like talking." King's eyes moved between us, reading something neither of us had said out loud, and settled on Reid with a weight that made the morning air feel ten degrees colder. "Walk with me, Kastellan."
It wasn't a request. Reid knew it wasn't a request. He went, jaw tight, and I stood at the fence line alone, watching the two of them disappear around the side of the warehouse, heart still going too fast, that folded note practically burning a hole through my memory even though King had pocketed the actual paper the night before.
I didn't hear what King said to him. I only saw the aftermath, twenty minutes later, when Reid came back through the yard pale and quiet in a way that lasted considerably longer than twenty minutes should have.
---
### Alaric
I didn't touch him. I want that on record, mostly for my own benefit, because every single thing in me wanted to.
*[Break something,]* Rook suggested, unhelpful as always, watching Kastellan through my eyes like he was already choosing which bone. *[Just one. Small one. He'll get the message.]*
*Not how this works.*
*[Could be, if you let it.]*
*I'm not losing this club over a prospect's ego.*
*[Wasn't talking about the club's ego. Was talking about mine.]*
I walked Kastellan around the side of the warehouse, out of earshot of the yard, and stopped him there with a hand flat against his chest — not a shove, just enough pressure to make clear the conversation was happening whether he liked it or not.
"You wrote that note."
"I didn't say I—"
"You wrote that note." Quiet. I'd learned a long time ago that quiet did more work than volume ever could. "I'm not asking you to confirm it. I'm telling you I already know, and I'm telling you this is the only conversation we're having about it."
Rook, watching Reid's pulse jump under his collar, sounded almost satisfied. *[There. He's scared now. Good.]*
*Good's not the word I'd use.*
*[It's the right word. Scared men don't overreach twice.]*
"Whatever you think you've noticed about Finch," I said, "you're going to stop noticing it out loud. You're going to stop leaving notes. You're going to stop cornering him by fences at hours when nobody else is around to witness it. Are we clear?"
"He's hiding something." Reid's voice cracked, just slightly, the first honest thing he'd said all morning. "You have to see that too. You're not blind, King."
*[He's not wrong,]* Rook pointed out, entirely unhelpful, entirely too pleased with the observation. *[Kid's got a nose for something, even if he doesn't have the whole picture yet.]*
*Shut up.*
*[Just an observation.]*
"What I see," I said, "is a prospect who's earned his place in this club through work, not privilege. And a prospect who hasn't." Reid's jaw tightened at that, exactly the reaction I wanted. "You want to catch up, Kastellan, catch up in the garage. Catch up on the ring floor. Don't catch up by digging through paperwork looking for a weakness to sell."
"I never said I was selling anything."
"Didn't say you were." I let that sit a second, let him hear exactly how much I already knew without me having to spell it out. "But you're circling something you don't understand, and men who circle things they don't understand get bit. I'd rather it not be me who has to explain that to you twice."
Rook, satisfied now, settled back under my skin with the particular stillness of a wolf who'd gotten exactly what he wanted without needing to draw blood for it. *[He'll remember this.]*
*He'd better.*
*[Not sure he's the one you need to worry about forgetting things, though.]*
*Meaning what.*
*[Meaning you still haven't told Finch you took that note out of his boot and kept it. Meaning you're carrying a stranger's secret in your own pocket right now like it means something to you.]*
I didn't have an answer for that. I walked back toward the yard instead, Kastellan trailing a few careful steps behind, and found Finch waiting exactly where I'd left him — watching the two of us cross the lot with an expression I couldn't fully read, somewhere between relief and a question he hadn't decided whether to ask yet.
*[Go on,]* Rook said, quieter now. *[Tell him something true for once.]*
I didn't. Not yet. I just held his gaze a beat too long, the way I'd been doing since that very first morning, and told myself the truth could wait one more day.
Rook, unconvinced, said nothing at all — which, from him, was somehow worse than an argument.
- Writer
