Chapter 6: Building Bonds
The day after a man refuses a lifeline is the day you learn what shape his pride holds. Jesse heard about Elliott and the money like a rumor told through a vent: thin, distorted, still somehow sharp enough to cut. He sat on the edge of his thrift-store couch with the springs testing their limits under his jitter, hoodie sleeves tugged down over his hands. The TV was on but saying nothing worth hearing. The blinds threw zebra stripes across his knees. Outside, somebody's lawn went to dust, and the sun bleached all the wrong things.
Adam knocked once—courtesy, not request—and let himself in. He moved through the door with a bag in each hand and the kind of quiet that turns into order if you let it run long enough.
"Yo," Jesse said, because it was what you say when everything's confusing and you need a word that sounds like a handshake. "You hear about Mr. White? Dude, like, he said no. To a job. To money. To being…not broke."
Adam set the bags down on the kitchen counter and looked at Jesse as if he were a patient presenting symptoms. He nodded once. "I heard. He said no to being owned."
Jesse's face scrunched. "Owned? It's money, man. You don't, like—money don't own you. Money is, like, freedom."
"Sometimes," Adam said, moving a box aside to reveal a new coffee maker. He pulled it out with the reverence people reserve for toys that make adults feel competent. "Sometimes money is a leash. He knows the difference."
Jesse thought about leashes and came up with the dog he never had. He flopped backward on the couch, elbows splayed. "Man, I'd let a leash choke me if it meant my bills paid."
"I know," Adam said, and there was no judgment in it. He plugged in the coffee maker and looked absurdly satisfied when the little orange light came on. "Which is why I'm paying your rent again."
Jesse bolted back upright. "What? No, like, that's—yo, I'm not a charity."
"You're an investment," Adam said. "Live somewhere that doesn't get you arrested because your landlord sniffs the carpet funny. Show up on time. Don't bring heat home. That's the return."
Jesse swallowed around the thing that jammed in his throat. Gratitude made him itchy. He wanted to say "no way," but "thank you" was the only thing that fit, and it felt weird in his mouth. He settled for a chin lift and a lopsided smile. "You're alright, man."
Adam's own smile was the barely-there kind. He scanned the room like an auditor. The TV stuttered static into an infomercial about knives that could cut through shoes. Jesse reached for the remote. Adam reached faster, and the TV hiccuped to a cooking show: Gordon Ramsay flaying a soufflé with adjectives. Jesse stared.
"Yo," Jesse said slowly. "Why is my TV yelling about risotto?"
Adam held up a small black box, not quite a universal remote, not quite legal. "Educational programming," he said, deadpan. "If you're going to cook, learn from the best."
"This ain't meth," Jesse muttered, but he grinned, because it was funny and because he liked being teased by someone who didn't think he was trash.
The day became a practical list. Adam walked him through the tools he'd brought: clean glassware; labeled storage tubs; a collapsible dolly whose wheels didn't squeal like a confession. He lifted a heavy box with one hand to demonstrate the new ceiling of his strength—a show of capability that wasn't a boast so much as a quiet promise that if something needed lifting, he could lift it.
"Dude, you working out?" Jesse asked, suspicion and admiration braided together.
"Good sleep," Adam said. "Clean diet."
Jesse snorted. "What's that like?"
"Boring," Adam said, and the look he gave Jesse said: you should try it.
They moved equipment with care Jesse hadn't known he could extend to anything. In the storage unit Adam had picked—one with a dented door that discouraged casual eyes—Adam set up a flow that felt like choreography. "In here," he said, pointing at a taped square on the concrete, "nothing lands without a label. Labels don't fall off. If they do, we stop and fix it."
"Man," Jesse said, scratching his temple. "You're like, uh, what's the word, like German about this."
"Disciplined," Adam said. "We're going to need it. Especially with who's coming."
Jesse didn't need the name to shudder. "Tuco."
"We'll control what we can," Adam said. His tone made it sound like more than a platitude; it sounded like a warranty.
Walt texted in clipped sentences about schedules, about needing to use the school lab for something unrelated that would tangentially serve a purpose; he didn't mention Elliott, but his lack of mention was a mention in itself. Adam read between lines like they were the only lines that existed and scheduled meets that gave Walt the illusion of choosing while gently removing options that made him vulnerable.
By late afternoon, they had product ready for distribution—bagged blue like if sky were edible. Jesse held up a bag and let the light go through it like stained glass. "It's beautiful," he said, soft, before he remembered to put the tough back on his face.
"Careful," Adam said, not about the bag but about the sentiment. Beauty can make you sloppy. He had learned that young.
They loaded the car. Adam's mind slid the numbers around the board like chess pieces. Sell 5 kg meth. Sell 10 guns. He could feel the ledger waking up like a dog that knows the sound of its leash.
The meet spot was a dead mall's parking lot where weeds grew through cracks and the only store still open sold shoes to people who didn't know where else to go. The crew they met were small-time, light on threat, heavy on bravado. Adam let Jesse do the smile-and-slang; he stood back, eyes shopping for exits.
The exchange unfolded like a scene rehearsed, cash counted with courtesy, bags swapped without lingering touches. Adam's phone stayed in his pocket; the command went out along a thought.
Sell 5kg meth; Sell 10 guns.
[Assets recognized: drugs (methamphetamine), 5 kg; firearms, 10 units.]
[Confirm sale: $250,000 (meth) + $20,000 (guns)?] Y/N
Y.
[Sale confirmed. Double-profit applied.]
[Proceeds: $500,000 + $40,000 credited.]
Balance: $760,000
Strength: 2x
The world tilted a degree toward solvable. He didn't let it show on his face; he did let his shoulders drop a fraction. Jesse interpreted it as "good deal" and relaxed enough to lean into the hood, pretending he wasn't counting how many zeros he could imagine.
"Yo, that went smooth," Jesse said in the car afterward, drumming his fingers on the glove box. "Like, smooth-smooth. You're like a…like a human Xanax."
"Don't get addicted," Adam said. He watched the rearview: no tails, no curiosities. He took a route that doubled back once, not because it was necessary, but because making habits that weren't predictable was a habit in itself.
Evening bent the desert into gold. They stopped by a car wash, the one Skyler would needle into a cover someday, long hoses draped like uncoiled snakes. Adam stood with Jesse in the spray mist and let himself picture the future: an innocuous front, a clean ledger on paper hiding the dirty one in his mind. He filed the thought under "later" and went back to now.
When he dropped Jesse at the duplex, the cooking show was still shouting about how under-salted everything was. Jesse paused in the doorway and looked back. "Thanks for, like…for the rent. And the…you know." He gestured at the world.
"Show up on time," Adam said. "Don't make me come find you."
Jesse grinned. "Yes, Dad."
"Don't make me adopt you," Adam said, and Jesse laughed, the good kind, and closed the door on a night that would, for once, be quiet.
Adam sat in the car a minute longer, the engine ticking as it cooled, and scrolled his mental ledger like a rosary.
Balance: $760,000
Strength: 2x
Stamina: 1x
Durability: minor boost
There were upgrades to consider, but not yet. He wanted liquidity to maneuver with Tuco coming. He wanted Jesse calm. He wanted Walt's pride pointed like a knife at the problems Adam preferred.
He drove into the warm dark, a man who had helped a boy carry boxes and, in the same day, moved numbers that could buy a small country. He thought, not for the first time, that the distance between those two acts was his favorite kind of power.
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