The thumbnail sat in the sealed bag on the table.

Harolin sat in the chair and breathed through his nose and did not make another sound. His thumb was wrapped in a cloth Seo had produced from somewhere, which told Harolin that all of this had been planned with the specific detail of someone who knew how to do this and had done it before.

Seo sat on the edge of the table and looked at him.

"Trust me, Harolin darling. I’m not your enemy," Seo said.

"You drugged me and pulled my thumbnail off," Harolin said. "Define your terms."

"I’m not your enemy in the way that matters," Seo said. He picked up the sealed bag and looked at it. "Your brother paid me fifty million to kill you."

Harolin looked at him.

"My brother? Elijah?"

"Yes, Elijah," Seo continued. "He’s been planning it for a while, apparently. The inheritance situation. Your existence complicates his position as the legitimate heir." He set the bag down. "I took the contract because that’s what I do. But I’m not going to fulfil it."

"Why? Because of me? Or wait, is it because of Ruaan?" Harolin said.

Seo looked at him with a version of his expression that was genuinely honest. "Yes. Because of Ruaan." He paused. "He would not recover from it. And I find that I’m not willing to be the reason for that."

Harolin said nothing.

"Which puts me in a complicated position," Seo said. "Because your brother is not someone who accepts failure. If I report back that the job is incomplete, he would send someone else. Someone who won’t have my reasons for stopping." He crossed his arms. "So I need you dead."

"You just said..."

"No, you don’t understand. I need you officially dead," Seo said. "Dead to the people who paid me. To Elijah. To the facility. To everyone." He picked up the hair sample and held it up. "Your DNA. Your watch. A body that can’t be identified because of fire damage but carries enough of your physical markers to be confirmed." He put it down. "You will leave Blackmere as a dead man. You will go somewhere your brother can’t find you. You plan your response or your revenge. And when you’re ready, you come back if you like."

Harolin looked at the bag.

"Ruaan," he said. "What about Ruaan?"

"Ruaan will mourn you," Seo said. "I know. I’m not pretending that’s a small thing." He met Harolin’s eyes. "But Ruaan alive and grieving is better than Ruaan watching you actually die when your brother sends someone I can’t intercept."

Harolin sat with it.

He thought about his brother, Elijah. He remembered growing up in the Crowe house as the son of the mistress, tolerated and dismissed in equal measure. He also remembered his mother and what she had endured and what had ultimately taken her. The two years he had spent building his revenge against the wrong person, while his actual enemy was in the family house, planning something considerably more permanent.

But, he couldn’t take his mind off Ruaan. He thought about Ruaan on his bed this morning, drinking milk and complaining about five rounds like someone who had no idea they were being watched by people who wanted them used as leverage.

If he stayed and Elijah sent someone else, Ruaan could become a target.

If he left, Ruaan thought he was dead, which would hurt in a way Harolin could not fully calculate.

"How long?" Harolin said. "How long am I supposed to be gone for?"

Seo tilted his head.

"How long until I can come back?" Harolin said.

Seo considered. "Long enough to deal with Elijah. Months. Possibly longer. It’s your cross to carry, darling, not mine."

"I can reduce Ruaan’s sentence," Harolin said. "Before I go. I can do it quietly. He doesn’t have to know it’s from me."

Seo looked at him with his brows raised.

’Even with all of this happening, he’s still thinking about Ruaan. How cute.’

"And when I come back," Harolin said. "He needs to be safe even while I’m gone."

Seo was quiet for a moment.

"He has me," Seo said. "I won’t allow any harm to come to him."

Harolin looked at him with a flat expression. He didn’t trust a word coming from Seo’s mouth.

"Is that supposed to be reassuring?" Harolin asked.

"In the ways that count, yes," Seo said simply.

Harolin looked at the ceiling of the underground cell and the old stone and the new damp and the single light. He exhaled deeply as he tried to put Ruaan somewhere in his head. He’s not only doing this for himself but also for his future with Ruaan.

He closed his eyes.

"Do it," he said.

.

.

The alarm went off at 2am.

However, it wasn’t the usual morning alarm. It was the emergency tone that was repeating over and over again. The sound was long enough and annoying enough to cut through the inmates’ sleep and demanded immediate attention. It was followed immediately by the announcement voice telling all inmates to proceed to the field.

Ruaan was already standing by the door. He had not slept, not when Harolin hadn’t returned.

He grabbed the phone and his watch and went with the crowd, moving through the corridors with everyone else, the confused, half-asleep energy of more than three hundred people being directed somewhere in the middle of the night.

The field was cold.

He found a spot near the edge and stood and looked at the facility building and saw the smoke. It was coming from one wing, the eastern section. Officers moving fast between the building and the perimeter.

Murmuring spread through the field immediately.

"What’s happening?"

"Is that why we were called out?"

"A fire? I hope it doesn’t affect recreation day or breakfast."

Ruaan just stood there and watched. That’s when Seo appeared beside him.

Ruaan looked at him and looked away.

Seo looked at the smoke with a curious expression, like someone watching something they had just woken up to find happening. He had his broken glasses on. His grey uniform was slightly rumpled, like he had been asleep.

"What happened?" Seo asked.

"I don’t know yet," Ruaan said. He wished he could ignore Seo, but he couldn’t help it.

"Were you with Harolin? Is he handling it?" Seo looked around the field. "I don’t see him anywhere."

"I’ve been looking for him since after lunch," Ruaan said. "I haven’t found him."

Seo looked at him. "Since after lunch? That’s strange."

"Yes," Ruaan said. "It really is."

"I’m sure he’s handling the fire situation," Seo said. "He always knows what to do."

Ruaan did not respond. He kept his eyes on the building.

Oren was visible near the far side of the field, moving quickly between groups of officers, following information as it arrived.

Ruaan watched him as his eyes tracked where he went and who he spoke to, and the specific quality of each conversation.

Then Oren stopped. He stood completely still for three seconds. Then he turned and looked across the field and found Ruaan. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

He lowered his head for some seconds and walked toward him.

Ruaan watched him come.

He watched Oren’s face and read it from twenty metres away and felt something cold begin to settle in his chest before Oren had opened his mouth.

Oren stopped in front of him.

He looked at Ruaan and said nothing for a moment.

"Tell me," Ruaan said. "What happened?"

"They found an officer," Oren said. "In the fire burning in the east wing," He paused. "They found Harolin."

Ruaan looked at him, dread already washing over him.

"He was—" Oren stopped and started again. "He didn’t make it, Ruaan."

Ruaan heard the words.

He heard them clearly and in the right order, and his brain processed them correctly.

And then he heard them again. The officers were running back through, checking and looking for the error.

There was no error.

"That’s not right," Ruaan said.

"Ruaan—"

"That’s not right," he said again. "He was going to come back soon. He said he’d return to me tonight."

"I’m sorry," Oren said with his head still lowered.

Then, a siren at the gate.

The crowd shifted, and everyone turned. The gate at the far end of the field opened, and the ambulance pulled through and slowly moved along the perimeter road.

The stretcher was visible through the gate gap.

It was covered completely. Like it could not be looked at directly.

Ruaan watched it come, but he could not look away.

The stretcher passed along the road adjacent to the field, and the fabric shifted slightly as the wheels hit a joint in the road, and one arm fell clear of the covering.

The hand was burnt. But wrapped at the wrist was a watch.

A familiar smart watch. The one Harolin bought after he gave Ruaan his former one.

The watch Harolin had been wearing when he left the room this morning.

Ruaan stared at it, and his hand came up to his own mouth.

The cold that had been settling in his chest since Oren’s face crossed the field arrived all at once and became something else. Something total.

Immediately, his eyes rolled to the back as his body limped to the ground.