The heir they buried

Chapter 3

Renata was the one who found the exact place to cut.

The offer was still hanging in the air, Barrett watching Desmond the way a cat watches something it hasn't decided whether to let go, when Renata decided to help it land.

"Beatrice's monitor is still beeping somewhere across town," she said, arms still folded, voice flat as a closed door. "You really want to lose this job over your pride? A man like you can't afford pride. You couldn't even afford it before tonight."

It worked, for a second. Desmond looked down at Barrett's shoes, polished to a shine that had never known a scuff, and thought about the unpaid balance sitting on his aunt's chart, the interest that compounded whether he was watching or not, the surgery still hanging somewhere just out of reach. His knees came dangerously close to remembering how to bend.

Then he thought about what kneeling would actually buy him. Not Beatrice's surgery. Not Renata's tuition, which apparently belonged to someone else's future now. Just the privilege of being allowed to keep serving drinks to men like this one for another few months, until the next time Barrett decided he wanted a show.

Desmond straightened his spine instead.

"I'd sooner kneel for a dog," he said. "At least a dog's loyalty means something."

He turned to Pruitt before Barrett could recover his smile. "I quit. Don't bother firing me, you're too slow anyway."

He looked at Renata last, and there was nothing gentle left in him to spend on her. "You're going to regret this," he said, quiet enough that only she and Barrett caught it, and didn't wait to see what her face did with the words.

The crowd in the doorway parted for him without being asked to, phones still raised, already captioning the footage before he'd made it past them. Nobody stopped him. Nobody needed to. He'd already lost everything worth taking.

The public ward was quiet by the time he got there, the kind of quiet that only existed at that hour, machines breathing for people too tired to breathe loudly themselves. Beatrice was asleep, her hand curled loosely on top of the blanket the way it had been every night that week. He lowered himself into the chair beside her bed, a chair that had worn a permanent dent from all the nights he'd spent in it, more his now than any piece of furniture he actually owned, and didn't wake her, because there was nothing he could tell her tonight that wouldn't cost her sleep she needed more than he needed comfort.

He let himself think, for the first time in longer than he could remember, about how strange it was that she wasn't his. Not by blood, not by any law that would hold up anywhere. She'd been the neighbor two doors down when the accident took his parents, the one who hadn't waited for a caseworker's paperwork before pulling him out of the wreckage and deciding, apparently on the spot, that he was hers to keep. She'd never once let him call her foster mother, never let him call her anything but family, like the word itself was a technicality beneath both of them.

He owed her more than a job he'd just walked away from. He just didn't know yet how he was going to pay it.

It was past midnight when he finally left, the city thinned out to streetlights and the occasional car. He heard the footsteps before he understood what they meant, one set becoming two, then three, closing the distance behind him with a patience that had nothing to do with being lost.

By the time he turned, there were four of them, spread wide enough that running wasn't going to be an option anyone let him have.

"This isn't a robbery," the one in front said, almost bored by having to explain it. "Somebody wanted you to get a message tonight. We're just the delivery."

Desmond didn't need to ask whose name was on the package.

They didn't give him time to brace. The first hit caught him in the ribs and folded him forward, and after that it was just impact after impact, fists and boots finding him from angles he couldn't track, the pavement scraping the side of his face raw when he finally went down. He curled into whatever shape hurt the least, tasting blood at the back of his throat, and waited to stop being useful to them.

Then headlights swept the alley, tires screeching close enough to throw grit across his back, and the rhythm of the beating stopped like someone had cut the sound out of the world.

A woman stepped out of the car before it had fully stopped moving, coat immaculate despite the hour, and crossed the distance to the four men like their number was an inconvenience rather than a threat. Desmond watched through swollen eyes as she took them apart, one after another, with a precision that made the earlier violence look amateurish by comparison, each of them down before the next had finished understanding what was happening to the last one. It was over faster than it had started.

She crouched over the last one still conscious, said something too low for Desmond to catch, and stood up holding a name like she'd just been handed a gift.

"Barrett Kestrel," she said, mostly to herself, tasting the syllables like she intended to remember exactly how they felt.

Then she turned toward Desmond, and whatever calculation had been running behind her eyes shifted into something else entirely. She crossed the alley and lowered herself into the wreckage beside him, careful of his ribs in a way the men who'd broken them hadn't bothered to be.

"Young master," she said, bowing her head slightly, her voice carrying no room at all for argument. "Forgive me for taking this long to find you."

Desmond opened his mouth to ask what any of that meant, and found he didn't have enough left in him to make the words come out.