The dining room felt smaller than Brandon remembered.
He sat at the head of the table—his usual spot, back when he'd actually been present for family meals—and stared at the plate Julia had reluctantly set before him. Meatloaf, mashed potatoes, green beans. Comfort food. The kind of meal she used to make when she wanted to remind him that home was worth coming back to.
Now it tasted like ash.
"So I told Martinez, I said, 'Listen, if you want to close this deal, you need to stop treating the client like he's an idiot.'" Derek leaned back in his chair, gesturing expansively with his fork. "The guy's a CFO at a Fortune 500 company. He knows when someone's trying to blow smoke up his—" He glanced at Lily, who was pushing her green beans around her plate. "Well, you know."
Julia laughed. Not a polite chuckle, but a full, genuine laugh that crinkled the corners of her eyes.
"What did Martinez say?"
"What could he say? I was right. We closed the deal the next day. Biggest commission of the quarter." Derek grinned, that perfect, confident smile that had always come so easily to him. "Speaking of which, I've been meaning to tell you—I got us reservations at that new Italian place downtown. The one with the six-month waiting list? Turns out the owner's a client."
Brandon's fork scraped against his plate. The sound cut through the conversation like a knife.
"Us?" Brandon asked quietly.
Derek's smile faltered for just a moment. "Oh, I meant—you know, Julia mentioned she's been wanting to try it. I figured if I could get reservations, maybe we could all go. You, me, Julia. A night out."
"How thoughtful."
The words hung in the air. Julia's eyes darted between the two men, a flicker of something—guilt? fear?—crossing her face before she smoothed it away.
"Derek's just being nice," she said carefully. "He knows how stressed I've been lately."
"I'm sure he does."
Silence descended over the table. Lily looked up from her plate, sensing the tension even if she couldn't understand it.
"Daddy, are you okay?"
Brandon forced himself to smile. "I'm fine, sweetheart. Just tired. Eat your vegetables."
Derek cleared his throat. "So, Brandon, Julia tells me you've been working. That's great, man. Really great. What kind of work?"
"Deliveries. Odd jobs. Nothing interesting."
"Hey, work is work. No shame in honest labor." Derek's tone was warm, supportive, exactly the voice of a concerned friend. The same voice that had lent Brandon thousands of dollars over the years. The same voice that had told him to come home to his family while secretly plotting to take that family for himself.
Brandon said nothing.
The rest of dinner passed in fragments. Derek told more stories—about work, about mutual friends, about a fishing trip he was planning. Julia laughed at all the right moments, her hand occasionally brushing Derek's arm in a gesture that could have been innocent if Brandon didn't know better.
Brandon ate mechanically, tasting nothing, feeling nothing except a cold weight in his chest that grew heavier with every passing minute.
Lily finished her dinner and asked to be excused. Julia sent her upstairs to brush her teeth and get ready for bed. The three adults sat in uncomfortable silence until Derek finally pushed back from the table.
"Well, I should probably head out. Early meeting tomorrow." He stood, stretching. "Thanks for dinner, Jules. It was incredible as always."
Jules. He called her Jules. Brandon had never heard anyone else use that nickname.
"I'll walk you out," Julia said quickly.
Brandon watched them go, his fists clenched beneath the table. He could hear their voices in the hallway, low and murmuring, followed by the distinctive sound of the front door opening and closing.
A moment later, Julia returned. She didn't meet his eyes.
"I'm going to go say goodnight to Lily," she said, already moving toward the stairs. "Then I'm going to bed."
"Julia—"
"No." She stopped but didn't turn around. "I don't want to talk, Brandon. Not tonight. I'm too tired and you've barely said ten words all evening. Just—" She sighed. "Sleep on the couch. Tomorrow, we'll discuss what happens next."
"What does that mean?"
Now she did turn, and the look in her eyes made Brandon's stomach drop.
"It means I think you should find somewhere else to stay for a while. A few days. Maybe longer. I need time to think, and I can't do that with you here."
"This is my house."
"This is a house you almost lost because you couldn't stop gambling." Julia's voice was flat, matter-of-fact. "A house where your daughter has been crying herself to sleep wondering where her father is. A house where I've been holding everything together by myself while you—" She stopped, pressing her lips together. "I can't do this right now. Sleep on the couch. We'll talk in the morning."
She climbed the stairs without another word.
Brandon sat alone at the dining room table, surrounded by the debris of a family dinner, and wondered how much longer he could keep from breaking.
---
The couch was too short and the cushions too thin, but exhaustion eventually dragged Brandon into something resembling sleep. He dreamed of dark warehouses and ceramic cats and a woman laughing in a bedroom window while shadows moved behind her.
He woke to gray morning light and a stiff neck.
The house was quiet. A note on the kitchen counter, written in Julia's neat handwriting, informed him that she'd taken Lily to school and would be running errands afterward. The note ended with a single line: Please be gone by noon.
Brandon crumpled it in his fist.
His phone buzzed.
UNKNOWN: Go back to the Bluebird Motel. Room 12. Look under the mattress.
Brandon stared at the message, his sleep-fogged brain struggling to process.
BRANDON: What am I looking for?
UNKNOWN: You'll know when you find it. Go now.
---
The walk to the Bluebird Motel took over an hour. Brandon's legs still ached from yesterday's bicycle marathon, and every step sent fresh complaints rippling through his muscles. But he kept moving, one foot in front of the other, because stopping meant thinking and thinking meant drowning.
He fished the room key from his pocket as he approached. He'd paid for three nights when he first arrived, thinking he might need a place to stay for a while. The manager hadn't asked for the key back when Brandon left to visit his family, and Brandon hadn't offered it.
Room 12 was at the far end of the building, its door identical to all the others—peeling paint, tarnished numbers, a lock that probably hadn't been changed since the Reagan administration.
Brandon slid the key in and turned it.
The door swung open.
The room looked different than he remembered. The bed was made with fresh sheets—or at least, sheets that were less stained than before. A suitcase sat open on the luggage rack, women's clothing spilling out of it. Toiletries lined the bathroom counter, visible through the half-open door.
Someone was staying here.
Brandon hesitated in the doorway. The texter had said the room was his. He'd paid for it. But clearly—
Under the mattress.
He moved quickly, crossing to the bed and lifting the corner of the mattress. His fingers touched fabric—something soft, wrapped around something hard. He pulled it out.
A bundle wrapped in black cloth, about the size of a brick.
Brandon unwrapped it carefully, already suspecting what he would find.
A gun.
A semi-automatic pistol, black and angular, with a textured grip and a short barrel. Brandon didn't know much about firearms, but he knew enough to recognize that this wasn't a toy. This was a weapon designed to kill.
The bathroom door opened fully.
Brandon spun around, the gun still in his hand.
A woman stood in the doorway, wrapped in a bathrobe, her wet hair plastered to her face. She was maybe thirty, with sharp features and dark eyes that went wide with shock when she saw him.
For a moment, neither of them moved.
Then the shock on her face hardened into anger.
"What the hell are you doing in my room?" She stepped forward, her voice rising. "How did you get in here? I'm calling the police right now, you sick—"
Her eyes dropped to his hand.
To the gun.
The anger drained from her face like water from a broken glass. What replaced it was something Brandon recognized all too well.
Terror.
"Oh God." Her voice was barely a whisper now. "Oh God, no. Please."
"This isn't what it looks like," Brandon started. "I was staying here before, I have a key, I just came back to—"
"I'm sorry." She was backing away, her hands raised in front of her like she could ward him off. Tears were forming at the corners of her eyes. "I'm sorry, okay? I didn't mean to. I never said anything. I swear to God, I never told anyone."
Brandon's blood ran cold. She wasn't listening. She wasn't hearing a word he said. All she saw was a strange man in her room holding a gun, and whatever nightmare she was living in had convinced her he was there to end her life.
"Please," she continued, her voice cracking. "I'll disappear. I'll leave tonight. You'll never see me again. I'll never say anything to anyone. Just please—please don't—"
Brandon realized with sudden clarity that every second he stayed made this worse. He could explain until his lungs gave out, but this woman had already decided what he was. And if she screamed—if someone heard—if the police came and found him standing here with an unregistered weapon—
He ran.
Through the door, across the parking lot, down the street. The gun was still clutched in his hand, the black cloth trailing behind him like a banner. He shoved it into his jacket as he ran, pressing it against his ribs where it couldn't be seen.
He didn't stop until he was six blocks away, doubled over in an alley behind a strip mall, his lungs burning and his heart threatening to explode.
What the hell was that?
The woman's face swam in his memory. The fear in her eyes. The way she'd begged for her life, convinced that someone had sent him to kill her.
I'll disappear. I'll never say anything to anyone.
What had she done? What did she think he knew?
His phone buzzed.
DEPOSIT: $500.00
FROM: UNKNOWN SENDER
REFERENCE: ITEM RETRIEVED
Brandon stared at the notification, his chest heaving. Five hundred dollars for a gun and a traumatized stranger.
BRANDON: What the hell was that? Who was that woman? Why was there a gun in that room?
UNKNOWN: Go to the Starlight Inn on Belmont Road. A room will be arranged.
BRANDON: I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what's going on.
UNKNOWN: The Starlight Inn. Belmont Road. Now.
BRANDON: Answer me!
Nothing. The screen remained silent, offering no explanations, no justifications. Just another address. Another order.
Brandon looked at the gun-shaped bulge in his jacket. At the phone in his trembling hand. At the mouth of the alley, where normal people walked past on normal streets living normal lives.
He had a choice. He could throw the gun in a dumpster, smash the phone, go to the police, and try to explain everything. The mysterious texts. The tasks. The money appearing in his account from nowhere.
They would think he was insane.
And Castellano's men were still out there, still looking for him, still owed fifty thousand dollars that Brandon couldn't pay.
He started walking toward Belmont Road.
---
The Starlight Inn was marginally nicer than the Bluebird—cleaner carpets, working televisions, a manager who didn't look like he belonged on a wanted poster. The sign out front advertised FREE HBO and WEEKLY RATES, and the parking lot held a reasonable number of cars that looked like they actually ran.
Brandon approached the front desk.
"I need a room."
The manager—a heavyset man with a patchy beard and tired eyes—looked him up and down. "How many nights?"
"One. For now."
"That'll be three hundred dollars."
Brandon blinked. "Three hundred? Your sign says rooms start at seventy-nine."
"Sign's out of date." The manager shrugged, utterly indifferent. "Three hundred. Cash or card."
Brandon wanted to argue. Wanted to point out that this was robbery, that no motel room in this part of the city was worth three hundred dollars a night, that he was being gouged simply because he looked desperate.
But he was desperate. And the gun pressing against his ribs was a reminder of how few options he had left.
He paid the three hundred dollars.
---
The room was small but serviceable—a queen bed, a dresser, a television mounted to the wall, and a couch that looked marginally more comfortable than the one he'd slept on last night. Brandon locked the door behind him, checked the window locks, then pulled the gun from his jacket and set it on the nightstand.
He stared at it for a long moment.
Why would the texter want him to have a gun? What was he supposed to do with it? The tasks so far had been strange but relatively harmless—retrieve a package, deliver a box, dine and dash at a restaurant. But a weapon changed things. A weapon meant the possibility of violence.
What am I getting into?
He had no answers. The texter offered none. All Brandon had was money in his account, a gun on his nightstand, and the growing certainty that he was being moved around a board he couldn't see by a player he couldn't identify.
He collapsed onto the couch without bothering to remove his shoes, every muscle in his body singing with exhaustion. He should call Julia. Check on Lily. Try to explain something, anything, that might make his life make sense again.
Instead, he reached for the remote and turned on the television.
The local news was playing. A woman in a red blazer was speaking directly to the camera, her expression grave.
"—returning to our top story this hour. Authorities are still investigating the explosion that rocked the Warehouse District late last night. Emergency crews responded to 4417 Warehouse Row shortly after eleven PM, where a massive blast had partially collapsed the structure."
Brandon sat up slowly.
4417 Warehouse Row.
The address he'd delivered the box to yesterday.
"At least twenty people were killed in the explosion," the anchor continued. "Investigators say the victims appear to have been inside the warehouse when the blast occurred, though the reason for their presence at the abandoned facility remains unclear. Sources tell us that authorities are treating the incident as suspicious, and federal agencies have been called in to assist."
The screen cut to aerial footage—the warehouse, or what remained of it. Half the building had been reduced to rubble, twisted metal and shattered concrete scattered across the surrounding lot. Fire crews were still hosing down smoldering debris.
"Anyone with information about the explosion or the identity of the victims is encouraged to contact—"
Brandon turned off the television.
He sat in silence, staring at the blank screen, his mind racing through possibilities he didn't want to consider.
Twenty people. Dead. In a warehouse where he had delivered a package just hours before the blast.
A package the texter had told him not to open.
His hands were shaking. He looked down at them, at the fingers that had carried that box across the city, that had placed it in the lockbox on the folding table.
The gun on the nightstand seemed to stare back at him, cold and patient, waiting for whatever came next.