Page 95 of Pucked Around and Found Out

“More than you can handle.” He leans back as much as the restraints will allow. “You might want to call your guard dog off, Tor. If he keeps hitting me, they're going to start getting twitchy out there.”

Carnage makes a sound low in his throat that isn't quite human.

“Carn.” He stills at my voice, but the fury rolling off him is a physical thing, thick enough to choke on. I don't look at him because I can't afford to, if I see his face right now I'll lose the thread of control I'm barely holding. “Step back.”

A beat of silence.

“Step. Back.”

The sound of him moving away from Masen is the only confirmation I get.

I take three steps forward until I'm standing directly in front of my brother. Close enough to see the shadows under his eyes, the hollowness in his cheeks. He's been running. Whatever performance he's putting on right now, whatever trap he thinks he's sprung, he's been running too. He just hides it better than I do.

Always has.

“Here's what I think,” I say, keeping my voice level. “I think you have men outside. I think you planned this, let yourself be found, set this whole thing up so you could sit there looking smug while I walked into your trap.” I watch his face, watching for the small tells I spent my whole childhood learning to read. “But I also think you didn't plan on Scott's people getting here as fast as they did. I think the timetable you set in your head is already running short and you are sitting there trying to decide if your men are going to hold or cut their losses.”

Something moves behind his eyes.

There it is.

“You always did talk too much,” he says.

“And you always underestimated me.” I crouch down to his level. I need him to look at me, really look at me without the performance. “I'm not asking you to surrender, Masen. I'm not asking you to get on your knees. I'm asking you to look me in the eye and answer one question.”

His expression doesn't change. “And if I don't?”

“Then I stop asking questions and start making decisions you won't like.” I hold his stare. “Where is Father's second?”

The air in the room shifts.

It's subtle, barely anything at all, but I have spent enough time in rooms with dangerous men lately to know what it looks like when someone's mask almost slips.

Masen's does.

Just for a second. Just long enough.

And in that second, the bottom falls out of my stomach.

I hear Vivian's voice in my head from weeks ago. Every lead dissolves. Every name leads to a wall. I hear Ezekiel, exhausted and frustrated, telling me the trail had gone cold again. I hear Pope running through the cartel's financial structure like a maze with no exit, coming back empty handed every single time.

I think about all those sleepless nights. All those dead ends. The way I kept telling myself I was missing something, that someone was deliberately keeping the second invisible.

Someone was.

He's been sitting in front of me this entire time.

“It's you,” I breathe.

Masen says nothing.

The silence is the confirmation.

“It was always you.” The words come out slowly, like I'm pulling them up from somewhere deep. “That's why we couldn't find anything. That's why every name, every number, every thread we pulled came apart before we could trace it back to anyone. Because they all led to you and you made sure they never would.” I stare at my brother. This person I grew up with. This person I defended, adored and grieved over. This person I have been going to war against and I feel something I wasn't prepared to feel.

I feel stupid.

Genuinely, gutturally, humiliatingly stupid.