Chapter 5

Jack POV

Three days.

That's how long I had been inside this place without stepping beyond the corridor outside my room.

Ryan didn't say I was confined. He didn't need to. The guard posted outside my door said it clearly enough. The way meals appeared three times a day without me asking said it. The way no one spoke to me directly unless I spoke first said it.

I was a kept thing.

I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the ceiling. It was high and white and clean. Everything here was clean. The sheets smelled like something expensive. The towels were thick. The bathroom had hot water that actually stayed hot.

I hated how much I noticed these things.

Back in Stone City I used to dream about a room with a door that locked properly. Now I had a room with a door that locked from the outside and I would have given anything to be back in that unfinished building near the railway line.

At least there the cage was open.

I stood up. Moved to the window.

The estate spread out below me like a small country. Manicured hedges. A long driveway. Black vehicles parked in formation. Guards moved in pairs along the perimeter. Their routes were timed. I had been watching long enough to know that.

Twelve minutes.

That was how long before the same two guards completed their loop and appeared again beneath my window.

I pressed my forehead against the cool glass.

Somewhere out there Stone City was still alive. Markets were loud. Buses were making noise. People were shouting prices and arguing over space. It was dirty and dangerous and it had never once offered me anything.

But it was mine.

This place belonged to Ryan Thompson.

Everything in it. Everyone in it.

Including me apparently.

I turned away from the window and moved toward the door. Not to try it. I already knew it would open. Ryan wasn't stupid enough to literally lock me in. The guard outside was the lock.

I opened it anyway.

The guard turned immediately. He was broad. Young face but old eyes.

"I need water," I said.

He studied me for a moment then nodded once. "I'll have it brought."

"I want to get it myself."

A pause.

"I'll have it brought," he repeated.

I looked at him for a long moment then stepped back inside and closed the door quietly.

That was the shape of my life now. Every small thing negotiated. Every movement monitored. Every request filtered through someone else.

I sat back down.

The water came five minutes later. A woman in a grey uniform set it on the table with a small plate of sliced fruit. She didn't make eye contact. She left quickly.

I didn't touch the fruit.

I drank the water slowly and listened.

That was the one thing they couldn't take from me. My ears.

This mansion had sounds if you paid attention. Footsteps through walls. Doors opening and closing in patterns. Voices that carried through vents if the air was still enough.

I had been listening for three days.

I knew Ryan's footsteps now. Heavy and even. Never hurried. He walked like a man who had never once been chased.

I knew the sound of the morning shift change. Six forty-five. A murmur of voices near the stairwell. The shuffle of boots.

And I knew that the room directly below mine was used for meetings.

I had discovered that on the second night when voices rose through the floor just after midnight. I couldn't make out words then. Just tones. Tense. Clipped. The kind of conversation where every word cost something.

Tonight it was happening again.

I heard the first voice just past eleven.

I moved off the bed slowly and lowered myself to the floor. Pressed my ear against the cold marble.

The voices became clearer.

"—shipment rerouted. Castellano's men intercepted the truck before it reached the port."

A pause.

"How many did we lose?"

"Three drivers. Two are in hospital. One didn't make it."

Silence.

Then a voice I recognized immediately.

Ryan.

"And the cargo?"

"Gone. All of it."

Another silence. Longer this time. The kind that meant someone in that room was afraid of what came next.

"Castellano is getting bold," a third voice said. Older. Rougher around the edges. "This is the second hit this month. He's testing you, boss."

"I know what he's doing," Ryan replied. His voice was calm. It was always calm. That was the most frightening thing about him. "Pull Dante and his unit from the south side. I want them on port security from tonight."

"And the Castellano situation?"

"I'll handle it."

"Boss—"

"I said I'll handle it."

No one spoke after that.

I heard the scrape of chairs. Footsteps. The sound of a door closing heavily.

Then quiet.

I stayed on the floor for a long time after that.

Castellano.

The name sat in my chest like a stone.

I didn't know who he was. But from the way those men spoke I understood enough. Someone out there was challenging Ryan. Someone dangerous enough that even the men in that room who carried guns and wore their violence like a second skin sounded careful when they spoke of him.

And I was here.

Inside the middle of it.

I pressed my back against the bed and drew my knees up.

I thought about what Ryan had said to me the night he stopped my escape. He hadn't been angry. He had been certain. You cannot leave. As if it were simply a fact of the world like the sun rising or the rain falling.

I thought it was about control then.

Maybe it still was.

But there was something else now sitting underneath that certainty. Something I hadn't considered before.

Ryan Thompson had enemies.

Real ones.

The kind that intercepted trucks and killed drivers and tested boundaries month after month.

And those enemies didn't know me. Didn't care about me. But I was living inside the most visible target in Stone City.

I pulled the blanket off the bed and wrapped it around my shoulders.

The fruit on the table was still untouched. I stared at it for a moment then reached over and took a piece slowly.

It was sweet.

I chewed and thought and listened to the mansion settle around me.

Stone City was dangerous. I had always known that. I had grown up swallowing that danger one day at a time.

But this was a different kind of dangerous.

This wasn't the random cruelty of empty pockets and closed doors and men who laughed at you for not having certificates.

This was organized. Deliberate. The kind of danger that wore suits and spoke in quiet voices and moved cargo through ports in the dark.

And somewhere out there a man named Castellano was circling it.

Circling Ryan.

Which meant he was circling this house.

Which meant he was circling me.

I finished the fruit slowly.

Outside my window the guards completed their loop and disappeared around the corner.

Twelve minutes.

I counted anyway.

Because in a place like this the only power I had left was information. And information started with paying attention.

So I would pay attention.

I would listen through floors and watch through windows and count the seconds between patrols.

Not to escape.

Not yet.

But because something told me quietly and clearly in the back of my mind that before this was over I was going to need every single thing I had learned.

Stone City had taught me one truth above all others.

Survival wasn't luck.

It was preparation.

I lay back down on the bed. Closed my eyes.

Somewhere below me Ryan Thompson was handling things.

Above him I was learning them.