Page 17

M y monitors glowed in the darkness of our makeshift command center, bathing the room in cold blue light. I'd transformed the Sentinel's media room into a war room within hours of our arrival, commandeering every piece of tech I could find and setting up a surveillance network that rivaled anything the FBI could build. Four days of searching, and I still had nothing solid on Phoenix.

I was trapped in this gilded cage while Dad recovered in a hospital bed I wasn't allowed to visit. Everyone else got to come and go—War with his medical expertise, Mom with her right as Dad's wife, even fucking River and Theo had been permitted to leave and return. But not Algerone's precious "assets." Not his sons. We remained locked away like artifacts while Maxime fed us sanitized updates, curated like we were children who couldn't handle the truth. With each passing hour, rage built in my chest with nowhere to direct it except into the hunt.

The latest hospital photo of Dad sat minimized in the corner of my screen. Bandages covered burns on his arms and chest, medical equipment surrounding him like some kind of cybernetic cocoon. They'd reduced his sedation yesterday. He was awake, asking for us. For me. And here I sat, uselessly scrolling through data while Phoenix remained free.

I shifted in my chair, wincing slightly. The bruises on my hips from Leo's fingers were tender reminders of how we'd spent the early hours of the morning. His way of helping me cope wasn't gentle, but it was effective. The sharp pleasure-pain had quieted the chaos in my head, at least temporarily. Without him, I'd have lost my mind completely by now, but the evidence of our encounters was written across his skin in purple-blue splotches. Fresh marks peeked from beneath his collar, joining the older ones that had faded to yellow-green. I'd apologized this morning when I saw them, but he just smiled that soft smile of his and said they helped him remember who he belonged to.

Leo caught me looking at him and raised an eyebrow. Always so fucking perceptive. Despite everything, I was grateful for his presence. Leo was the only one who didn't try to fix me or calm me down. He just gave me an outlet for my rage, a body to mark, someone to control when everything else was beyond my reach.

"This is fucking hopeless," I muttered, slamming my fist against the desk hard enough to make the monitors jump. Another search query returned zero results, mocking my efforts. Useless. I was fucking useless.

The timeline I'd constructed covered one entire wall. Every hunt, every target, every detail meticulously documented. Red string connected photos, reports, and locations in a web that looked more like a conspiracy board than actual detective work. And yet nothing connected. No pattern emerged. No child seeking vengeance for a parent I'd eliminated.

Still, I got up and marched over to it, studying it intently. The answer was here somewhere. Why couldn't I see it?

"If your brooding gets any more intense, they're going to cast you in the next Batman reboot," Xander drawled, eyeing me from his perch on the arm of the couch. "Though I must say, the whole 'obsessive vigilante surrounded by evidence' aesthetic really works for your bone structure. Very chiaroscuro."

I flipped him off, then winced as Xion's phone camera flashed.

"What the fuck?" I growled at him.

Xion slouched back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. "Boone asked for an update. He's losing his damn mind being away from our dogs for so long."

"Maybe you should take a break, Xavier," Leo suggested from his workstation beside me.

He'd been reviewing security footage for the past six hours, dark circles forming under his eyes. His fingers flew across the keyboard, the soft clicking of a familiar rhythm that usually calmed me. Not today.

Leo pushed out his chair and came to stand behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders to knead the knots that had formed there. "You've been at this for sixteen hours. Maybe a nap would help."

His touch was gentle despite the marks I'd left on him, each fingertip pressing precisely where the tension was worst. He was good at that—finding exactly where I hurt and applying just the right pressure.

"I'll take a break when Phoenix is dead," I snarled, but didn't pull away from his touch. His thumbs dug into the base of my skull, and I leaned into the pressure despite myself. "I just need to figure this out. Dad trusted me to handle this kind of thing, and I'm failing him."

"Hey." Leo came to stand in front of me, forcing me to look at him instead of the board. "You are not failing. We'll get this guy, Xavier, but you need to take care of yourself in the meantime, okay?"

I sighed, closed my eyes, and leaned forward, letting our foreheads touch.

"Awww, look at them," Xander cooed dramatically, pressing a hand to their chest. "Broody McBrooderson actually letting someone touch him without ripping their arms off. I'm feeling a bit emotional right now. Xion, are you seeing this? Our little sociopath is growing up."

Xion snorted without looking up from his phone. "Five bucks says they fucked in the security room last night."

"Please, I'm not taking sucker bets," Xander replied, waving a dismissive hand. "The camera feed mysteriously went dark for forty-three minutes."

"We didn't fuck in the security room," Leo corrected absently, still massaging my shoulders. "That's disgusting. Besides, there's not enough room for someone Xavier's size to bend over in there."

The room went dead silent. Leo's hands froze on my shoulders as he realized what he'd just revealed. Xander's jaw actually dropped—something I'd never seen in real life.

"Holy shit," Xander whispered reverently. "Little Leo's the top?" They gasped dramatically, eyes widening as a thought struck them. "Wait—oh my god. Are we all bottoms? Is this a genetic thing? Did we inherit our sexual preferences from Algerone?"

"Jesus Christ," Xion muttered, finally looking up from his phone. "That's not how genetics work."

"But what if it is?" Xander pressed, clearly delighted by their own theory. "What if Algerone himself is actually—"

"Don't," I growled, but it was too late. The image was already forming in all our minds.

Xander's face lit up with unholy glee. "I bet Maxime knows. I'm going to ask him."

"That's fucking disgusting," I snarled, though I couldn't quite banish the disturbing mental image.

Xion tilted his head. "Actually, I could see it. All that control in public... might crave the opposite in private."

"I'm going to be sick," I announced, while Xander cackled.

Leo cleared his throat awkwardly. "Maybe we could... not discuss your biological father's sexual preferences?"

"You think this is funny, don't you?" I growled at Xander.

"Hilarious, actually," they replied with a smirk. "The great Xavier Laskin, terror of the criminal underworld, bending over for his virgin boyfriend. It's positively Shakespearean in its irony."

I grabbed the front of Xander’s shirt. "You're about three seconds away from eating your own teeth."

"Ladies, ladies," Xion drawled from his chair, not even looking up from his phone. "You're both pretty. Can we get back to finding the psycho who's trying to barbecue our family, or do you need to whip them out and measure first? Because we all know I'd win."

Leo blinked. "But…you're identical triplets. Isn't it…you know. The same size for all of you?"

All three of us froze, turning to stare at Leo in stunned silence. Xander's mouth hung open. Xion looked like he'd been slapped. I felt something between horror and possessive fury surge through me. Why the fuck was Leo thinking about my brothers' dicks?

"What? I just—" Leo started, then stopped, his face flushing as he realized what he'd just said. "I mean, scientifically speaking—"

"No," I cut him off, my voice deadly quiet. "We are not having this conversation. Ever."

"But—" Leo tried again.

"Ever," I repeated, fixing him with a look that shut him down immediately.

The awkward silence stretched between us like a live wire.

I released Xander's shirt with a disgusted shove. "Fuck you."

"No thanks," they replied cheerfully, smoothing out their shirt. "That's Leo's job now, apparently."

"I'm going to fucking kill you," I snarled, but there was no real heat behind it anymore. This was just Xander pushing buttons because it was what they did best. Because none of us knew how to process fear like normal people. "And you," I added, turning to Xion, "are a fucking traitor for not backing me up."

Xion finally looked up from his phone, his expression serious despite the banter. "Bro, I'm just glad someone's making you happy. God knows you've been a miserable bastard long enough." He shrugged. "Leo's good for you. Who cares who sticks what where?"

"That's... surprisingly mature of you," Leo commented, sounding genuinely impressed.

"Don't get used to it," Xion replied, returning to his phone. “The voices in my head are just too distracting for me to come up with a good one-liner right now.”

"And on that delightful note," I said, pinching the bridge of my nose, "can we please get back to finding the arsonist who's been targeting our family?"

Leo nodded. "Maybe we're overthinking this. What if we go back to the beginning?"

"The beginning of what?" Xander asked, apparently bored now that the prospect of a brotherly fistfight had faded.

"Xavier's hunts," Leo clarified. "The first time he went solo. If this is personal, it might go back further than we think."

"I've already done that," I pointed out, gesturing to the board. "There's nothing there."

"No, no. I mean start the first case over again. Look back at your very first job. Go through the evidence. Maybe the clue you need is something you missed the first time."

My jaw tightened. "I don't miss things, Leo. I don't do a job if I don't know everything."

"But maybe you did the first time." Leo approached the board and started pulling things down. "There's something somewhere in a job you did early on, probably. Something you wouldn't miss today, but your inexperience led you to overlook the first time. So let's start there. Tell us about the first case."

I stared at Leo, offended by the suggestion that I'd ever been inexperienced enough to miss something crucial. But the tiny voice in the back of my mind, the one that had been screaming at me for days that I was missing something, whispered that he might be right.

"Richard Thackery," I said after a long pause. "Slumlord. Let fourteen people die in fires because he was too cheap to fix faulty wiring, replace broken smoke detectors, repair fire escapes. Three separate properties, three separate fires, fourteen bodies."

"And you went after him because?" Leo prompted.

"Because no one else would. The authorities knew what he'd done. The evidence was clear. But his lawyers tied everything up in red tape. He was going to get away with it."

Leo nodded, his fingers flying across his keyboard as he pulled up my old notes. "Methodology?"

"I monitored him for two months. Learned his routines, his habits, his security measures. Then I broke into his house, disabled his phone lines, and waited for him."

"And then?" Leo's voice was carefully neutral, but I could see the fascination in his eyes as I described my first solo hunt. The one that had set me on my path as a vigilante.

"I broke his knees and ankles," I said, my voice flat. Clinical. "Made sure he couldn't escape, just like his victims couldn't. Then I told him about each person who'd died because of his negligence while I burned parts of him with my lighter. When he understood exactly why he was being punished, I set his house on fire around him and left."

Xander whistled low. "Damn, X. You don't fuck around."

"He deserved it," I said simply. "Fourteen people died terrified and in pain because of him. His death needed to match what he inflicted."

Leo was scrolling through the files, scanning everything with that laser focus that made him such a good analyst. "What about his family?"

"No family to speak of," I replied, moving to look over his shoulder. "Parents dead. Ex-wife remarried and in Florida. No siblings."

"Children?" Xion asked, coming to join us at the screen.

I frowned. "None that I recall. He lived alone."

"Let's check the divorce records again," Leo suggested, already navigating to the relevant files. "Sometimes custody arrangements reveal children that aren't otherwise obvious in the documentation."

The records appeared on the screen, and Leo scrolled through them methodically. I was about to suggest we move on when his finger stabbed at a line of text.

"There," he said. "Richard Thackery relinquished all parental rights to a minor child. Felix Burns Thackery."

My blood ran cold. Burns. The connection clicked into place with the inevitability of a deadbolt sliding home.

"Fuck," I whispered. "He had a son?"

A father for a father.

Leo was already searching, fingers flying across the keyboard as he pulled up everything he could find on Felix Burns Thackery. "He dropped the Thackery after his father's death," he reported. "Goes by Felix Burns now. Holy shit—look at this. Graduated high school at fourteen. MIT at seventeen. IQ estimated in the 170s."

"A fucking genius," Xion muttered, leaning closer to the screen.

"Wait, that's weird," Leo continued, brow furrowed as he scrolled through Felix's history. "He graduated MIT with the highest honors at nineteen, turned down positions at Google, Microsoft, and three different intelligence agencies... and then enlisted in the military? Cyber operations division."

"That doesn't track," Xander said, voicing what we were all thinking. "Why would a certified genius with his pick of tech jobs join the military?"

"Structure," I suggested, the profile forming in my mind. "Discipline. Training."

"Or access," Leo countered. "Military cyber ops would give him skills and connections he couldn't get in the private sector. His current employment is…Burns Innovations. Founded it himself three years ago. Tech security firm specializing in cryptocurrency and network security. Perfect cover for dark web operations."

Could this be him? The man we were after? The pieces were falling into place with sickening clarity. A son seeking revenge for his father's death. A technological prodigy with military training and resources. The symmetry of using fire to destroy what I valued most, just as I had done to his father.

"Wait, we're getting ahead of ourselves," Xander said, hands raised. "We don't know for sure it's him."

"Xander's right," Leo agreed, pulling the file closer. "This is a strong lead, but it's still just a theory. We need more concrete evidence before we go hunting this guy."

"So, what do you suggest?" I asked.

"We verify," Leo said simply. "Cross-reference the phoenix signature with Burns Innovations' designs. Check if Felix has any connection to your other targets or to the locations of the attacks. Build a proper case before we act."

"Fine," I conceded, swallowing my impatience. "But we work fast. Every minute we spend verifying is another minute he has to plan his next move."

The search revealed multiple properties across southeast Ohio, all remote, all perfect for his purposes. We'd just begun gathering evidence on Felix when a sharp alert blared through the room, red lights flashing across the security displays.

"Perimeter breach detected. Sector seven," Chance announced, voice suddenly crisp with urgency. "Security protocols activated."

My blood ran cold. Sector seven was the eastern perimeter, the most vulnerable approach to the mansion due to the dense tree coverage.

"Show me the footage," I demanded, already moving to the main security console.

The screens flickered, showing a grainy night vision image of movement through the trees, then abruptly went black. One by one, every monitor in the room shut down.

"Chance," I called, "restore visual. Now."

No response. The AI remained silent, which never happened. A cold dread settled in my stomach.

"Chance," Leo tried, "system status report."

Nothing. The silence stretched unnaturally complete in a house where technology controlled everything.

"Someone's in the system," I said, moving toward the security panel by the door. The screen displayed a message that confirmed my worst fears: SYSTEM OVERRIDE IN PROGRESS.

"Phoenix?" Leo's eyes widened.

"Has to be," I confirmed, my mind racing. Shit. Our deep search into Felix's background could have triggered an alert in his systems. If he was monitoring for anyone accessing his records, we might as well have sent him a formal invitation. "We need to check on Maxime and the security team."

I drew my Glock from its holster at the small of my back, the familiar weight settling into my palm. Beside me, Xander was already twisting one of their chunky silver rings to reveal the concealed blade. Xion simply cracked his knuckles and grabbed a heavy metal paperweight from the desk, weighing it like a potential weapon.

All traces of their earlier playfulness were gone, replaced by the cold efficiency that made us such effective operators. Leo stayed close to me, unarmed but alert.

The hallways were eerily silent, emergency lighting casting harsh shadows across walls that had seemed so safe just moments before. We moved as a unit, checking corners, maintaining discipline despite the adrenaline surging through our systems.

A door flew open to our left, and I whipped around, Glock aimed and ready. Shepherd stepped out, hands raised slightly when he saw the weapon. He took in our combat stance, the weapons, our expressions.

"System's compromised," he said, not a question. Behind him, Eli peered nervously around the doorframe. "We lost communications five minutes ago."

"We think it's Phoenix," I explained, lowering my gun slightly.

"Have you seen anyone else?" Xion asked, still gripping the paperweight like he intended to cave someone's skull in with it.

"Boone was heading for the east wing security station," Shepherd replied, his voice perfectly controlled despite the situation. "Said something felt off. That was before the systems went down."

My stomach tightened. If whoever had compromised the security system had managed to breach the Sentinel's physical defenses as well, Boone could be walking into danger. The mercenary was good, but even the best could be caught off guard by a well-planned ambush.

"We need to find him," Xion said.

"Agreed, but staying together is safer," I countered. "We check the main security station first, then fan out if necessary."

A crash echoed from somewhere deeper in the house, followed by a muffled shout that sounded like Boone. Xion was already moving before I could stop him, all thoughts of strategy abandoned.

"Xion, wait!" I called, but he was gone, disappearing around the corner.

"Go," Shepherd said, nodding at me and Xander. "We'll check the west wing, make sure everyone else is safe."

I hesitated, hating to split our forces, but there wasn't time to argue. "Be careful," I told Shepherd. "This guy's smart."

"So are we," Shepherd replied with cold confidence.

We parted ways, Shepherd and Eli heading west while Leo, Xander and I pursued Xion. The hallways stretched before us, suddenly sinister in their emptiness.

As we approached the main security station, I motioned for Leo and Xander to hang back while I took point. The glass enclosure came into view, and I immediately spotted a figure slumped in a chair inside.

Maxime.

He was bound tightly to an office chair with zip ties, a vivid purple bruise blooming across his left cheekbone. His mouth was covered with silver duct tape, but his eyes were open, alert and frantic as they locked onto mine. Two security guards lay on the floor nearby, similarly restrained.

I gestured for Xander to check the perimeter while I approached Maxime cautiously, gun still ready. Maxime's eyes widened further, trying to communicate something as I stepped closer.

"Clear," Xander whispered from the doorway after checking the corners.

I pressed a finger to my lips, signaling Maxime to stay quiet as I ripped the duct tape from his mouth in one swift motion.

"Behind you!" he gasped immediately.

I whirled around, gun still in hand. There was just enough time to register a masculine figure in a dark hoodie at the doorway before something heavy slammed into the side of my face. Pain exploded across my temple, vision bursting into starbursts of white and red.

The gun clattered from my fingers as I hit the ground hard, the world tilting and blurring around me. The last thing I heard was Leo shouting my name, his voice stretched and distorted like he was underwater.

Then nothing but darkness.