The morning sun filtered through the high windows of the manor's breakfast nook, but I wasn't tasting my coffee. My eyes were fixed on the newspaper headlines across the table, though my mind was tracking every movement Emily made as she reached for the sugar.
Five months of peace had made me soft in the eyes of the public, but internally, I was more high-string than ever. The return of the "Hotdog" note last night had changed the air in the house. It was heavy. Charged.
"You're staring again, Oliver," Emily said, her voice teasing but laced with a hint of something else.
I blinked, shifting my gaze to my cup. "I'm just thinking about the quarterly logistics report."
"Liar," she whispered, leaning closer. "You're thinking about that news report from last night. The warehouse. The note."
I stiffened. I had forgotten how well she could read the micro-expressions I worked so hard to kill. "It's just a prankster, Emily. Someone using an old name to get attention."
"Ethan doesn't think so," she countered, her fingers brushing against the sleeve of my suit as she reached for a napkin. That tiny spark of contact sent a jolt through me that I fought to suppress. "He stayed outside my apartment door until 2:00 AM last night. He wouldn't do that for a 'prankster.'"
A surge of jealousy, sharp and unexpected, flared in my chest. I knew Ethan was doing his job—protecting her—but the thought of him being the one watching over her while I was out in the streets made my jaw tighten.
"Ethan is just being thorough," I said, my voice coming out colder than I intended. "From now on, I've arranged for a private car to take you to the hospital. No more buses. No more walking two blocks to the subway."
Emily paused, her spoon hovering over her cereal. Her eyes, usually so warm, flashed with a bit of that Thompson fire. "A private car? Oliver, I'm a doctor, not a princess in a tower. I need to be among people."
"The people out there aren't who they used to be," I snapped, standing up. I walked around the table and stood behind her chair, my hands gripping the wood. I wanted to pull her into my arms, to tell her that I had seen the darkness coming back and that I couldn't lose her again. But I couldn't. Not yet.
"It's for your safety, Emily. Please. Just... do this for me."
She turned in her seat, looking up at me. The anger in her eyes softened into something deeper, something vulnerable. She reached up, her hand hovering near my chest, almost touching the spot where my heart was racing.
"You're being overprotective," she murmured. "But... I know why."
She thought she knew. She thought I was just traumatized by our parents' death. She didn't know I was the one who had pinned that note to the smuggler's chest.
"I'll take the car," she finally said, her voice low. "If it helps you sleep at night."
"It will," I replied.
We stood there for a moment, the silence between us filled with things we weren't brave enough to say. I liked the way she challenged me. I liked the way she smelled like rain and antiseptic. And looking at her, I realized she wasn't just my cousin by name or my partner in justice—she was the only reason I still bothered to come home at night.
"I have to go," I said, breaking the spell. "Meeting with the board."
"Be careful, Oliver," she called out as I walked away. "The world is dangerous, but sometimes you're your own biggest threat."
I didn't look back. I couldn't. If I had, I might have stayed and told her everything. Instead, I walked out to the black sedan waiting in the driveway, already checking the perimeter for shadows.
Later that afternoon, my phone buzzed. It was a photo from Emily.
It was a picture of a coffee cup from the hospital cafeteria. On the side of the cup, someone had drawn a tiny, cartoonish shield.
"Ethan bought me coffee again. He's a good friend, Oliver. Stop worrying about me. I have the best security in the world."
I stared at the message. My thumb hovered over the screen. I wanted to type, "I don't want him to be the one buying you coffee." Instead, I typed:
"Drink your coffee. See you at dinner."
I locked the phone and stared out the window of the 55th floor. My protectiveness was a cage, and I knew it. But in a city that wanted to burn us down, a cage was the only place I knew how to keep her heart beating.
The board meeting was a blur of numbers and expansion strategies, but my mind was stuck on the tiny cartoon shield Emily had sent me. I was halfway through a sentence about maritime insurance when my private phone vibrated.
A specific pattern. Two short pulses. Ethan.
I dismissed the board members with a wave of my hand, ignoring their confused looks. The moment the heavy oak doors clicked shut, I answered.
"Talk to me," I said.
"We have a problem, Oliver," Ethan's voice was low, filtered through what sounded like a secure line from the precinct. "The 'Hotdog' note from last night didn't just rattle the smugglers. It woke up the 13th Precinct."
"The 13th? That's not your jurisdiction."
"Exactly. Commissioner Miller has assigned a lead detective to the case. Her name is Detective Sarah Vance. She's young, brilliant, and she has a reputation for being a bloodhound. She doesn't care about corporate politics, and she definitely doesn't care about the Thompson name."
I sat back in my father's chair, staring at the dust motes dancing in the sunlight. "What does she have?"
"She spent the morning reviewing the cold files from five months ago," Ethan replied. "She noticed a pattern in the strikes—the precision, the height of the kicks, the lack of forensic evidence. She's not looking for a street thug, Oliver. She told the Captain this morning that she's looking for someone with professional combat training. Someone with 'unlimited resources.'"
My pulse quickened. If Vance started looking at people with "unlimited resources" who also happened to disappear during the exact hours of the strikes, my list of excuses would run thin very quickly.
"She's also looking into the medical records of local hospitals," Ethan added, his voice dropping an octave. "She wants to see who came in with 'mysterious' injuries during the Hotdog sightings. Oliver... she's going to visit the Aegis Medical Wing. She's going to talk to Emily."
The air in the room felt like it had been sucked out.
"If she touches Emily, I'll—"
"You'll do nothing," Ethan interrupted sharply. "If you react, you confirm her suspicions. Listen to me. I'm going to stay close to Vance. I've volunteered to be the 'liaison' between her task force and our precinct. I'll feed you her moves, but you have to stay clean. No masks. No notes. No Hotdog for a while."
"I can't do that, Ethan. There's another shipment moving tonight at the rail yards. If I don't stop it, the weapons hit the streets by dawn."
"Then let them hit the streets!" Ethan hissed. "The world won't end in one night, but your life will if Vance catches a glimpse of that mask. She's already obsessed, Oliver. She's calling Hotdog the 'Ghost of Brooklyn.' She wants to be the one to unmask the ghost."
I looked at the black bag hidden in my bookshelf. The restlessness in my soul was screaming to be let out, but the image of Vance questioning Emily—looking into her eyes and seeing the secrets I had buried there—was enough to make me pause.
"Keep me updated on her," I said finally. "And Ethan... if she gets too close to Emily, tell me immediately. I don't care about the mission then."
"I know you don't," Ethan said softly. "I'll watch over her. I'm already at the hospital café. Vance is supposed to show up in an hour."
I hung up the phone and walked to the window.
Detective Sarah Vance. A bloodhound on my trail.
I looked down at the city, feeling the weight of the two men I had become. Oliver Thompson, the man who built towers. Hotdog, the man who broke bones.
I had spent twenty years wanting justice. Now that I had it, I realized that justice was a jealous mistress—she wouldn't let me go until she had every part of me, even the parts I was trying to save for Emily.