Risk Management

Risk Management

POV: Rhys

"He was practically glowing when he took the Friday shift off."

Eric didn't mean anything by it. He was just leaning against the doorway of the security office, swinging his keys, talking about the shift schedule like he hadn't just placed a bomb on my desk.

"Who," I said. Not a question. A demand disguised as one.

"That new guy from the diner. Julian. Asked off Friday specific." Eric shrugged, already moving on to the next line item on his clipboard. "Guess he's got a date or something. Good for him."

I didn't respond. My hand stayed exactly where it had been, flat on the desk, and something in the room dropped a few degrees that had nothing to do with the thermostat. Eric kept talking — something about overtime, something about the weekend roster — and I heard none of it. I was already three steps ahead, running the math.

Friday. Bash had said five o'clock, same as always, no lunch plans yet decided. That had been a lie. A small one, a careful one, the kind he'd learned to tell because he thought I wouldn't notice the gap between what he said and what was true. I always noticed. I just hadn't known, until now, exactly what the gap contained.

"You good?" Eric asked, finally looking up from the clipboard.

"Fine," I said, and my voice came out level, unbothered, exactly the way it needed to.

"You sure? You've got a face like someone just told you the buildings are on fire."

"I'm sure." I picked up my jacket off the back of the chair. "Long day."

He didn't push it, which was one of the things I'd always appreciated about Eric — he knew when a conversation had ended even if nobody had said so out loud. I left the office without another word and sat in the car for a full minute before I turned the key, just breathing, letting the cold settle into something usable.

By the time I got home, I'd already worked through it three separate times, and each pass landed in the same place. This wasn't jealousy. Jealousy was a small, ugly thing, and I didn't deal in small, ugly things. This was an assessment. Bash didn't know how to evaluate risk. He never had. He handed his trust out like it cost him nothing, smiled back at anyone who smiled first, mistook attention for safety every single time, and someone always ended up paying for that mistake. It had never once been him who paid. It had always been me, cleaning up after whatever version of trouble his good nature had walked him into.

Julian was new. Julian was charming, apparently, generous with his time, the kind of easy that made people let their guard down. That wasn't reassuring, not to me — it was exactly the profile of someone who got what he wanted by being liked first and scrutinized never, though I couldn't have said what evidence I actually had for that beyond a coworker's shrug and a schedule request. I told myself the lack of evidence didn't matter. Some threats you assessed before they had the chance to prove themselves. Bash wouldn't see it coming either way. He never did. That was the entire reason he needed me standing where I was standing.

I found him in the kitchen when I got home, wiping down the counter he'd already wiped down twice that week, some nervous habit he thought I hadn't clocked.

"Busy week," I said, leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, taking up the exact amount of space the doorframe allowed.

"Same as always." He didn't look up.

"You look busy this week." I let that sit a second. "Anything on Friday I should keep clear for you?"

His hand stilled on the counter. Just for a fraction of a second, but I caught it the way I caught everything. "Not really. Might grab dinner with a friend."

"Which friend."

"Just someone from work." His eyes came up to meet mine and then dropped again, fast, back to the counter, back to the cloth moving in slow circles over a surface that was already clean. His throat moved once. That was the tell. That was the moment the story stopped matching the truth.

"You've never mentioned a friend from work."

"I mention things, Rhys. You don't always listen."

I let the silence stretch instead of answering that. He hated silence more than he hated being caught — I'd learned that a long time ago, that the quiet did more work than any accusation could. He shifted his weight, glanced at the clock, glanced at the door, doing the math on how much longer he could stand there before he cracked or I let him go.

"What time," I said.

"What?"

"This dinner. What time."

"I don't know yet. Seven, maybe." He set the cloth down, finally, hands flat on the counter like he needed something solid to hold onto. "Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't." I pushed off the doorway, stepping aside so he could pass, and watched something in his shoulders drop with relief, the way it always did when he thought he'd gotten away with something. He shouldn't have looked so relieved. I never needed to push when I already knew the shape of what I was dealing with.

"Have fun," I said, and I meant it exactly as much as he deserved to believe it.

I waited until the house had gone quiet, until his door had clicked shut down the hall and his breathing had evened out into something I recognized as sleep, before I took my phone out to the garage. The cold there was sharper, cleaner, and better suited to the kind of thinking this required. Bash didn't know how to evaluate risk. He thought anyone who smiled at him was safe. That was the entire justification, and it was enough, or I'd made myself believe it was.

I scrolled to a name I hadn't used in months — Miller, the diner's night manager, who still owed me for a favor from two winters back that neither of us talked about anymore — and dialed.

The phone rang twice before he picked up.

"Miller. It's Rhys."

"Hey, man. Kind of late, everything okay?"

"Everything's fine. I need a favour — small one." I kept my voice even, unhurried, the same tone I'd use walking someone through paperwork. "You've got a guy on staff, Julian. New-ish. I hear you're always short on Fridays."

"Julian? Yeah, he's solid. Why?"

"Put him on a double this Friday. Mandatory, if you can swing it. Tell him it came from corporate if you need a reason."

A pause on the other end, just long enough that I could hear him weighing it. "That a problem I should know about?"

"No problem. Just doing him a favour — kid could use the overtime, and you know how he is. He won't ask for it himself." I let that sit, easy, plausible, the kind of half-truth that didn't require a follow-up question. "You still owe me one, Miller."

"... Yeah. Yeah, alright. Consider it done."

"Appreciate it." I hung up before he could think about it any longer than he needed to.