Chapter Text
Dusk came to London, sodden and grey, rain gathered along the streets, breaking the city lights into trembling reflections. As Adam Norris’s car slipped away from the busy streets, the loud bustling noises of the city quieted down, leaving only the soft patter of rain against the tinted windows. His reflection floated faintly over the glass: charcoal suit, silver watch, perfectly knotted tie. He looked like exactly what everyone thought he was—a successful businessman on his way to another late meeting. There was nothing in his reflection to suggest that, within a matter of hours, everything he had spent years building would be held over his head. Nothing to suggest that the dealings carefully kept from official books and public view were finally about to catch up with him.
His phone vibrated against the leather seat beside him. Adam glanced down, a message from Lando staring back at him.
Lando: What time u going to be home tonight?
He read the message twice over before typing out a response.
Adam: Soon. Don't need to wait up for me.
His finger hesitated over the send button, his eyes lingering on the word soon. It was becoming an increasingly meaningless word in their household. Soon meant after Adam's phone call. Soon meant after a meeting was finished. Soon really meant when Adam was finished doing whatever it was that always seemed more important than his family. But tonight was different, if this deal went wrong he wouldn’t be able to protect his family this time.
In just a few days, Lando would be leaving, and for the first time Adam would no longer be close enough to watch over him. University was taking Lando to the other side of the country, further from home than Adam liked to think about. For months, there had always been something to organise—accommodation, admission paperwork, an endless list of things Lando insisted he did and didn’t need. Keeping busy had made the whole thing easier to ignore. But then the boxes appeared. Lando’s bedroom emptied a little more each day, pieces of nineteen years disappearing into cardboard boxes until the ache Adam had been determined to ignore became impossible to dismiss.
Soon there would be no shoes abandoned by the front door for someone to trip over, no half-finished cans of energy drink cluttering the coffee table, no voice calling down the stairs to ask what was for dinner. Adam once imagined that the empty house might be peaceful, that he and Cisca might even enjoy having the place to themselves again. Now, as the day slowly crept closer, he was beginning to wonder whether he really wanted the quiet after all. Tonight, sitting in the backseat of a car carrying him towards a meeting he already suspected wouldn’t go down easily, the worry settled differently in his stomach. Lando’s leaving had been planned for months, every detail arranged and accounted for, but suddenly the timing of it felt terribly wrong.
“Five minutes,” the driver called out from the front, his voice cutting through the muted hum of the engine and steady patter of rain, pulling Adam from his thoughts.
.
Adam slipped the phone into his suit pocket and looked out the windshield. An enormous warehouse appeared through the rain, Adam would have suspected it to be abandoned if it weren’t for a few harsh security spotlights burning above the gated entrance. A chain-link fence enclosed the property, and beyond it, shipping containers were stacked in uneven rows, their dark metal sides rising from the yard like oversized tombs. Adam had been here before, though never enough to become comfortable with it. Though this was intentional. Familiarity bred carelessness, and carelessness was dangerous. He adjusted his cufflinks, straightened his tie and checked his reflection in the window once more before opening the door and stepping out into the rain.
The large warehouse door opened before he reached it. In the centre of the room stood Zak Brown, his figure casting a large, ominous shadow across the concrete beneath the harsh fluorescent lights. Several of his associates lingered nearby, scattered loosely throughout the open space, their attention shifting towards Adam as he stepped inside.
“You’re late.”
His voice carried easily through the cavernous space without so much as a glance in Adam’s direction.
Adam let out a polite chuckle, his mouth curving into the faintest suggestion of a smile. “Maybe you’re early?”
The man’s expression remained neutral.
Adam stepped fully inside, and the warehouse door slammed shut behind him. The steady patter of rain disappeared with it, replaced by a silence that seemed to stretch into every empty corner of the building. The air was colder inside than he expected, thick with the smell of damp concrete, oil and rusted metal. Somewhere beyond the reach of the fluorescent lights, water dripped steadily from the ceiling, each drop striking the floor with an echo that travelled much further than it should have.
Adam took his time approaching. His gaze wandered across the warehouse with the idle curiosity of someone who had nothing to fear, passing over pallets stacked beneath blue tarps, open shipping containers near the loading bay and the men scattered throughout the space. He counted them anyway.
One lingered near the entrance behind him. Two more stood several metres apart beside the loading bay, their hands tucked into the pockets of dark jackets. Another remained closer to the centre of the warehouse, positioned just far enough behind the man to make his purpose obvious.
Four.
Adam kept walking.
He had learned a long time ago that men who wanted to intimidate you liked to make sure you noticed the obvious threats. The trick was finding the ones they hoped you wouldn’t.
His eyes moved once more across the warehouse, slower this time, until they settled on a figure standing further back in the shadows.
Five.
Adam let his gaze linger on the fifth man for only a moment before returning his attention to Zak at the centre of the warehouse. Zak had not moved. He remained at the head of a long metal table, his associates positioned loosely around him like an extension of the security lining the rest of the room. While the others shifted their weight and followed Adam’s approach with watchful eyes, Zak remained unnervingly still, his attention fixed solely on Adam.
Adam stopped at the opposite end of the table and placed his briefcase against its scratched metal surface. The dull thud echoed through the warehouse.
For several seconds, the only sounds came from the faint electrical hum of the fluorescent lights overhead and the persistent drip of water striking concrete somewhere in the darkness. Adam made no attempt to fill the silence. Men like this often mistook silence for intimidation, as though leaving enough of it between them might make the other person nervous enough to speak first.
Adam had spent too many years sitting across from dangerous men to make that mistake. Eventually, Zak’s gaze shifted towards the briefcase resting beside Adam’s hand, lingering there for only a moment before returning to his face.
“The payment came through.”
Adam rested his hands against the edge of the table, his expression giving nothing away. “Then what am I doing here? As far as I'm aware our business is done.”
Zak’s mouth twitched—not quite a smile, though something faintly amused passed across his features. “You think so?”
“I fulfilled my end of the agreement.”
“Did you?”
The question settled between them with enough weight to make Adam pause.
Across the table, Zak leaned back in his chair, his movements unhurried, his expression unreadable, his attention fixed entirely on the man opposite him. Whatever impatience Adam had expected to encounter was conspicuously absent; Zak did not look like someone preparing to argue over missing money. He looked like someone who already knew exactly where it had gone.
Adam held his gaze. “If you have something to say, Zak, say it.”
For several seconds, Zak simply watched him.
Then his fingers tapped once against the metal tabletop.
“We agreed on eight million...You paid five.” Irritation crept into Zak’s voice, subtle but unmistakable.
Adam’s expression remained unchanged. “Because the shipment was incomplete.”
“It wasn’t.”
“There were losses.”
“There weren’t.” Zak’s reply came almost immediately, his jaw tightening as he stared across the table at Adam.
Adam gave a small shrug, seemingly unconcerned. “Then perhaps you should speak with the people handling your shipments.”
“We did.”
“Your accountants?”
“We did.”
Adam tilted his head slightly, as though considering what other explanation there could possibly be. “Insurance?”
“We did that too.”
A brief silence settled between them. Adam folded his hands together and rested them against the edge of the table, meeting Zak’s stare with an almost infuriating calm.
“Then I’m not sure what you expect from me.”
For several more seconds, Zak simply watched him, his expression giving nothing away. Then, reaching towards the papers spread across the table, he pulled a photograph from amongst them and sent it sliding over the scratched metal surface towards Adam.
The photo showed a shipping container sitting beneath the harsh white lights of a loading yard, its identification number stamped clearly against the faded paint—one Adam recognised before the image had even come to a stop in front of him.
The recognition never reached his expression.
With deliberate ease, Adam lifted the image from the table and turned it slightly beneath the fluorescent light, allowing his eyes to travel over details he already knew. He lingered briefly on the identification number before examining the surrounding loading yard with the careful curiosity of a man trying to place something only vaguely familiar.
“The container was delivered to you.” Zak explained.
Adam said nothing while still keeping his gaze on the photograph.
“It was unloaded and the contents were transferred.”
Adam placed the photo back on the table. “And?”
“Where did they go?” Zak asked, jaw clenched.
Adam looked at him with a raised eyebrow, “I wouldn’t know.”
With a quiet sigh, Zak pulled another document from the pile and tossed it across the table, the paper skidding over the scratched metal before coming to rest directly in front of Adam. His gaze followed it down, passing over the lines of printed text until it caught on the signature at the bottom of the page—his own.
For the first time that evening, something disturbed Adam’s carefully maintained composure; his eyes lingered a fraction too long, and the confidence he had carried into the warehouse faltered just enough to betray him.
Zak noticed. “You signed the transfer.”
Adam lifted his eyes to look at Zak “You’ve been watching my company.”
Zak let out a low, humourless laugh that seemed to mock the very suggestion. “No Mr. Norris. We’ve been watching you.”
The distinction weighed heavily between them as Adam allowed his gaze to wander towards the men scattered throughout the warehouse. None had moved from their positions, yet the casual manner in which they had lingered only minutes earlier had disappeared, replaced by a quiet attentiveness that made it clear their presence was no longer merely for show. As his attention returned to Zak, Adam felt the realisation he had been avoiding since he stepped through the warehouse doors finally settled into place: somewhere along the way, perhaps even before he arrived, this meeting had ceased to be a negotiation.
He simply hadn’t wanted to admit it.
“You got your money.” Adam repeated, firmer this time.
“We don’t have all our money.” Zak stated calmly.
“You were paid what we agreed.”
“No. We were paid what you decided we deserved.” Zak’s voice remained level. “We gave you exactly what you asked for, and you decided you could lie about what arrived, invent a few losses and pocket the difference.” A humourless smile tugged briefly at his mouth. “Did you really think we wouldn’t notice?”
Adam’s jaw tightened as he considered everything he had expected to face when he walked into the warehouse: anger, raised voices, accusations thrown across the table, perhaps even the threat of a weapon if the conversation deteriorated far enough. Any of those he could have dealt with; anger made people reckless, and recklessness created opportunities to regain control.
Across the table, Zak remained unnervingly calm, showing none of the frustration Adam might have used against him, and it was then that Adam understood what made the situation so difficult. Zak wasn’t angry—he was certain, and certainty left very little room for negotiation.
“You should be more careful about making accusations,” Adam said quietly.
The man tilted his head “Is that a threat?”
“No. It's advice.”
The sadistic smirk returned to Zak’s face as he leaned forward as if he were about to tell a secret. “Then here’s some advice for you. Pay me what you owe.”
“And if I don't?” Adam challenged.
Zak didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he slipped a hand inside his coat, and before Adam could consciously register the movement, his own hand had shifted beneath the table. It was barely more than an instinctive twitch towards where his weapon sat concealed, but in a room where everyone seemed to be watching everyone else, it was enough. Near the entrance, one of Zak’s men straightened while another subtly adjusted his stance, their attention sharpening on Adam.
Zak noticed too.
For a moment, his hand remained hidden inside his coat, leaving Adam to wonder whether he had finally misjudged just how badly this meeting was going to end. Then Zak withdrew it—not with a weapon, but with a phone, which he placed calmly on the table between them.
“You’ve misunderstood something, Mr.Norris.”
The phone’s screen illuminated between them, drawing Adam’s attention down to the photograph displayed across it.
For several seconds, he couldn’t quite make sense of what he was looking at—not because there was anything immediately alarming about the image, but because there wasn’t. No blood, no violence, no obvious threat that could explain the sudden unease tightening in his chest. Instead, there was Lando, caught halfway through stepping out of a café Adam recognised only a few streets from home, an iced coffee balanced in one hand while the other pushed open the glass door behind him. His curls had been blown untidily across his forehead, and the beginnings of a smile pulled at his mouth as he looked towards someone beyond the edge of the frame.
It was painfully ordinary.
Had Adam seen the photograph anywhere else, he might not have given it a second thought; there was nothing unusual about his son getting coffee, nothing that should have inspired the cold feeling beginning to settle in his stomach. Yet the longer he stared, the more sinister that normality became. Lando was relaxed, distracted, entirely absorbed in whatever had caught his attention beyond the camera’s view, without the slightest indication that he knew someone had been watching him.
And whoever had taken the photograph had been close.
Adam stared at the photograph, the unease in his chest hardening into something far more difficult to ignore. Until now, Lando leaving had been a problem Adam knew he would eventually have to accept: a new city, a new home, a life increasingly separate from his own. He had spent months reminding himself that this was what was supposed to happen, that nineteen-year-olds left home and built lives their parents could no longer oversee, and that the discomfort he felt each time another box appeared in Lando’s bedroom was something he would simply have to get used to.
But this changed everything.
In a matter of days, Lando would be living on the other side of the country, surrounded by people Adam didn’t know and following routines he could no longer quietly keep track of. There would be no bedroom upstairs to check when he came home, no front door opening late at night to tell Adam he was safe, no familiar places where he could convince himself he knew exactly where his son was.
“Where did you get that?” The question came out more clipped than intended as he grew agitanted.
Zak offered no answer.
Adam slowly lifted his eyes from the phone, though the image seemed to remain burned behind them even after he looked away. “I asked you a question.”
“We’ve been keeping an eye on your family.”
The legs of Adam’s chair shrieked against the concrete as he lurched forward, the sound tearing through the warehouse and sending every head in the room towards him. “You leave them out of this.”
“We haven’t touched them.”
“You photographed my son.”
For the first time that evening, the careful mask Adam had worn into the warehouse began to fracture. His voice remained low, but anger had crept beneath it now, each word sharpened by the effort it took not to raise it. Zak merely regarded him from across the table, entirely unmoved by the anger beginning to bleed through Adam’s composure.
“And no harm came to him.”
Adam’s gaze dropped involuntarily towards the phone. Lando was still smiling up at him from behind the glass, frozen in a moment that had never belonged to the men in this room. Something about seeing that familiar expression lying between shipping manifests and falsified paperwork made Adam’s stomach turn; it was as though Zak had reached directly into his home and dragged a piece of his family into a world Adam had spent years keeping them safely outside of.
“You go near him again—”
“What?” Zak interrupted, the word quiet enough that Adam almost wished he had shouted it. Leaning back in his chair, he regarded Adam with the detached patience of someone watching an animal strain against a chain. “What exactly are you going to do?”
Silence stretched between them, thin and taut as wire.
Without breaking Adam’s stare, Zak reached for the phone and turned it face-down against the table, extinguishing Lando’s face beneath his palm.
“You took three million dollars from us,” he continued, each word delivered with unnerving precision. “You lied about the shipment. You falsified the paperwork, moved our money somewhere you thought we wouldn’t find it, and then walked in here expecting us to swallow whatever excuse you put in front of us.”
Adam’s hands curled beneath the edge of the table. “And now you’re threatening my family.”
“No.” Zak’s answer came without hesitation.
He leaned forward, slowly closing what little distance the table allowed between them. Beneath the fluorescent lights, his shadow stretched across the scratched metal until it reached Adam’s side.
“A threat is something you make when you still need to convince someone you’re serious.” His fingers rested lightly against the phone between them. “I’m making sure you understand that we are.”
A coldness settled deep in Adam’s stomach, spreading slowly as the full weight of what Zak had done began to sink in. For nineteen years, he had kept this part of his life carefully partitioned from the one waiting for him at home, building walls between the two so high that Lando had never been given reason to suspect there was anything on the other side. He knew his father was wealthy, knew the company demanded long hours and frequent trips abroad, and had grown accustomed to dinners interrupted by phone calls Adam refused to explain. What he didn’t know were the shipments hidden behind legitimate invoices, the signatures placed on documents that would never survive close inspection, or the names of the men with whom his father conducted business behind locked warehouse doors.
Adam had built the bridge between those two worlds himself.
Now Zak had crossed it.
“How long?”
Zak’s brow furrowed slightly. “What?”
“How long have you been watching him?”
Not for the first time, Zak allowed the silence to linger. His fingers remained resting against the phone, tapping once against its darkened screen before becoming still.
“Long enough.”
Adam’s hand tightened beneath the table. The answer was deliberately meaningless, and somehow that made it worse. Long enough could mean days. Weeks. Long enough to know which café Lando stopped at, which streets he walked when he left the house, who he spent his afternoons with. Long enough to stand across the road with a camera pointed at him while Lando went about his life entirely unaware that his father’s mistakes had begun following him home.
Every ordinary part of his son’s life suddenly seemed to Adam like an opening.
“You have till the end of the month to get me my money, lucky for you that the month has only started.”
Zak’s voice cut cleanly through his thoughts.
Adam looked up. “You're giving me 28 days?”
“Three million. The full amount.”
“And if I don’t pay?”
Zak pushed himself to his feet with maddening composure, straightening the front of his coat before fastening a button as though they had just concluded an ordinary business meeting. “Then we’ll collect what we’re owed another way.” The implication struck harder than any explicit threat could have. Around them, the warehouse seemed to fall impossibly quiet, until even the faint dripping of water somewhere amongst the containers sounded intrusive.
Adam remained seated, but when he spoke again, his voice had dropped into something low and dangerous. “My family has nothing to do with this.”
Zak turned his head just enough to look at him over his shoulder. “Then make sure it stays that way.”
For several seconds, neither moved. Adam’s fingers remained curled beneath the table while Zak held his stare, and between them sat the black screen of the phone that had, only moments earlier, held Lando’s smiling face.
Then Zak turned towards the exit.
Adam watched him cross the warehouse, his associates peeling away from their positions one by one to follow. Only when Zak reached the doors did he stop, one hand hovering near the metal handle.
He didn’t look back.
“You should tell your son you love him.”
Something inside Adam went still.
The warehouse doors rolled open before he could answer, and the storm rushed eagerly into the silence—rain hammering against the concrete, cold air sweeping through the cavernous space as Zak disappeared into the darkness beyond.
Then the doors slammed shut behind him.
And Adam was left staring at the phone.
Adam remained at the table long after the warehouse doors had slammed shut, staring at the empty stretch of metal where Zak’s phone had been only moments before. The photograph had disappeared with him, yet Adam could still see it with uncomfortable clarity: Lando stepping out of the café, coffee in hand, curls tousled by the wind, completely oblivious to the camera trained on him from somewhere beyond the frame.
For nineteen years, Adam had convinced himself that he could keep the ugliest parts of his world from ever reaching his son. He had built walls around their life with money, carefully kept secrets and every comfort he could provide, until the dangerous world in which he conducted his business had seemed impossibly distant from the one Lando inhabited.
Somewhere along the way, Adam had mistaken distance for safety.
His phone vibrated against the table.
The sudden sound dragged him from his thoughts, and when Adam looked down, Lando’s name illuminated the screen.
Lando: dad are you actually coming home?
Adam stared at the message, his thumb hovering uselessly above the keyboard. For one fleeting moment, he considered telling him everything—about the meeting, the photograph, the men who knew his name and the danger Adam had unknowingly allowed to follow him home.
Then he pictured that photograph again.
Adam: Heading home now.
He sent it before he could reconsider.
The reply appeared almost immediately.
Lando: okay <3
Adam closed his eyes.
In a few days, Lando was supposed to leave home with nothing more frightening ahead of him than moving boxes, unfamiliar roommates and the inevitable discovery that he had forgotten something Adam had reminded him to pack three separate times. Those final days were supposed to belong to them—to last-minute shopping, arguments over what would fit in the car, and Cisca inevitably insisting they take photographs before Lando left.
Now Adam would spend them looking over his shoulder.
Because Lando was still leaving. Adam knew that much; cancelling everything would only raise questions he couldn’t answer without exposing the very life he had spent nineteen years hiding from his son. But letting him travel across the country alone, knowing there were men watching closely enough to photograph him outside a café, was no longer something Adam could allow.
If he couldn’t keep Lando close enough to protect him himself, he would have to find someone who could.
And Lando could never know why.
-----
The drive home felt longer than usual. Gradually, the industrial outskirts disappeared behind him, warehouses and fenced lots giving way to glowing restaurants, apartment blocks and streets Adam had driven often enough to recognise even through the rain. From the backseat, he watched droplets crawl slowly down the window, collecting others in their path until they grew too heavy and slipped beyond the edge of the glass.
Still, his thoughts returned to the picture.
There had been something uniquely cruel about how ordinary it was. Had it shown Lando hurt, frightened or already in danger, perhaps Adam would have known what to do with the fear tightening around his chest; violence had a shape, something tangible he could point towards and say there. A weapon could be taken away. A threat could be confronted. An enemy could be fought.
But the photograph had shown none of those things.
It had shown Lando simply living.
Tomorrow morning, his son would wake without the slightest idea that a stranger had stood somewhere nearby with a camera pointed at him. In a few days, he would pack the last of his clothes into cardboard boxes, complain about how much he hated moving, argue with Adam over what he did and didn’t need, and eventually climb into a car believing that the greatest disaster awaiting him was discovering halfway across the country that he had forgotten his phone charger.
For the first time that evening, Adam found himself almost envious of him.
How easy it must be, he thought, to feel safe simply because you didn’t know you weren’t.
The car turned onto their street, and through the rain-streaked window, the familiar outline of home emerged beneath the glow of the streetlights. Moments later, the tyres rolled quietly onto the driveway.
Warm light spilled through the windows as the car came to a stop, painting soft rectangles across the rain-darkened driveway and illuminating a house that looked exactly as Adam had left it hours earlier.
Safe. Untouched.
He stepped from the car and made his way towards the front door, but before his hand could reach the handle, it swung open.
Lando stood on the other side.
“You said you’d be home before ten.”
Adam glanced instinctively at his watch. “Ten thirty.”
“Exactly.”
Despite everything, the faintest smile tugged at Adam’s mouth. “I got delayed.”
“You always get delayed.” Lando mumbles irritated.
“I know.”
Lando stepped aside, allowing him through, and the warmth of the house closed around Adam the moment he crossed the threshold. After the damp cold of the warehouse, everything inside felt almost unnaturally familiar—the lingering smell of whatever Lando had made for dinner, the candle burning forgotten on the kitchen counter, the quiet murmur of a television somewhere further inside. Ordinarily, Adam wouldn’t have given any of it a second thought. Tonight, he found himself noticing everything.
Along the hallway, cardboard boxes had begun to multiply, each sealed with crooked strips of packing tape and labelled in Lando’s unmistakably messy handwriting.
CLOTHES. BOOKS. KITCHEN. DO NOT OPEN.
Adam’s steps slowed.
Only a few days separated this version of the house from the one he had spent months trying not to imagine. A few days until those boxes disappeared, until Lando’s bedroom stood half-empty and the familiar noise of another person living upstairs went with him. Before tonight, Adam had thought the distance would be the hardest part.
Now distance meant something else entirely.
Once Lando left, protecting him would no longer be as simple as listening for the front door at night or glancing upstairs to make sure his bedroom light was on. Adam wouldn’t know whether he had made it home unless Lando told him; he couldn’t look out a window and see what car was parked across the street, couldn’t notice the same unfamiliar face appearing twice in the space of a week.
“Did you eat?” Adam asked, trying to distract himself from his thoughts.
Lando gave him an exasperated look. “Yes.”
“What?”
“Food.”
Adam gave his son an unimpressed eyebrow raise and let out a short sigh.
“Very descriptive.”
“Pasta.” Lando replies.
“Anything with it?”
“Dad.”
“Vegetables?”
“I’m nineteen.”
“That doesn’t make you immune to vegetables.”
Lando rolled his eyes, though the smile pulling at the corner of his mouth betrayed any genuine irritation. Adam found himself smiling back, allowing the familiar exchange to grant him, if only for a moment, the comforting illusion that nothing had changed.
Then Lando looked at him properly. “You okay?”
The smile faltered before Adam could stop it. “What?” he asks, caught offguard by his son's question.
“You’ve been weird.”
“I’m tired.” Adam answers quickly.
“You sure?”
Adam opened his mouth, but whatever automatic reassurance he had been about to offer died before it reached his tongue. For a moment, he simply looked at his son, taking in the same face he had seen smiling from Zak’s phone less than an hour earlier. Here, beneath the warm kitchen lights, Lando was close enough to touch, standing barefoot amongst half-packed boxes and dirty dinner plates, looking at his father with nothing more than mild concern.
There were a thousand things Adam could have told him.
He could have confessed that the business Lando had grown up believing was legitimate had another face entirely, one hidden behind falsified paperwork, unregistered shipments and meetings held in warehouses after dark. He could have told him about the three million dollars, about Zak and the men who had watched Adam from the shadows while his son’s photograph lay glowing between them. Most of all, he could have told Lando that somewhere along the way, the consequences of Adam’s choices had stopped circling him and begun moving towards the people he loved.
But telling him the truth would mean tearing down nineteen years of carefully constructed lies in a single conversation.
And Adam wasn’t ready to watch his son look at him differently.
Instead, Adam reached across and squeezed Lando’s shoulder, allowing his hand to linger there for a moment longer than it normally would.
“I’m fine.”
For another second, Lando studied him with the quiet suspicion of someone who knew his father well enough to recognise a lie but not well enough to know what lay beneath it. His brows drew together, his head tilted slightly, his lips parted as though another question was already waiting on his tongue.
Then, apparently deciding against it, he nodded.
“Okay.”
As Lando turned towards the stairs, Adam watched him go, following the familiar shape of his son through a hallway crowded with boxes and half-packed pieces of the life he was preparing to take elsewhere.
“Lando.”
Halfway up the stairs, his son stopped and glanced back over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
Be careful.
What frightened Adam most was how desperately he wanted to say it.
Two harmless words under any other circumstances—ordinary, forgettable, exactly the sort of thing a father might say to his son without thinking. Tonight, however, they carried too much weight. Lando would hear the difference immediately; he would notice the hesitation, question the sudden concern, start pulling at threads Adam couldn’t afford to let unravel.
So Adam swallowed the warning and replaced it with a smile.
“Goodnight.”
Lando’s expression softened. “Night.”
Up the remaining stairs he went, his footsteps growing quieter with every step until the sound disappeared somewhere above and a bedroom door clicked faintly shut. Adam remained exactly where he was, surrounded by the warm glow of the hallway, the lingering scent of dinner and the cardboard boxes waiting patiently along the walls.
Only then did his smile disappear.
------
Behind the closed door of his study, the warmth of the house seemed strangely unable to follow him.
Through the rain-streaked windows, London glimmered in fractured pieces—blurred headlights crawled along the wet streets, distant buildings glowed against the darkness, traffic lights bled red across the pavement below. Adam stood before the glass for a moment, watching the city continue as though nothing had changed, while his own reflection hovered faintly over it: shoulders heavy, tie still knotted at his throat, the exhaustion he had hidden all evening finally beginning to show.
Above him, Lando was safe.
For tonight, at least.
With a tired movement, Adam slipped off his jacket and draped it across the back of his chair. His tie followed, loosened with one impatient tug, before he lowered himself into the leather seat behind his desk. At the warehouse, composure had been another part of the suit he wore—his movements measured, his expression unreadable, his voice carefully controlled—but here, with no audience left to deceive, the seams were beginning to split.
His phone felt heavier when he pulled it from his pocket.
There was only one person Adam trusted enough to call.
Hamilton had spent years working in private security, although private security was the kind of clean, respectable phrase people used when the truth was considerably messier. What Hamilton actually possessed was something far more valuable: contacts in places Adam avoided, favours owed by people he had never met and access to men whose particular talents were rarely written down. Discreet, capable, unquestioning—exactly the sort of people Adam had previously preferred to keep at a comfortable distance.
Tonight, distance was a luxury he no longer had.
Adam found the number and pressed call.
Once.
Twice.
Three times.
On the fourth ring, the line connected.
“Hamilton.”
No greeting, no confusion, no sleep-clouded hesitation—just his name, delivered in the low, alert voice of a man who seemed perpetually prepared for bad news.
Adam leaned back in his chair, allowing his gaze to drift towards the ceiling.
“I need protection.”
For several seconds, only silence answered him.
“For the company?”
“No.”
Adam continued staring upwards, as though the plaster separating the two floors might somehow become transparent if he looked long enough. Somewhere above him, Lando was probably surrounded by half-packed boxes, discarded clothes and whatever else he had decided absolutely needed to accompany him across the country.
“For Lando.”
This time, the silence on the other end stretched noticeably longer.
“What happened?”
“They're threatening my family.”
Whatever remained of Hamilton’s casual tone vanished. “Who is?”
“Zak Brown and his men.”
“And how close have they gotten?”
Adam’s jaw tightened.
“Close enough to photograph him without notice.”
Another pause—shorter than the last, but infinitely heavier.
From somewhere beyond the study door came the faint groan of a floorboard overhead. Adam’s attention snapped towards the ceiling before he could stop himself, every instinct momentarily sharpened by the sound, until he recognised the familiar creak of someone moving across the upstairs hallway.
Lando.
Even inside his own home, Adam was listening for danger now.
“How serious is this, Adam?”
“Serious enough that I’m calling you.”
A quiet breath travelled through the speaker, followed by the faint rustle of movement on Hamilton’s end of the line. When he spoke again, there was no hesitation, no uncertainty, no trace of the man who had answered only moments earlier.
“Does Lando know?”
“No.”
“Does he know you’re in trouble?”
“No.”
A breath crackled quietly through the speaker. “Adam—”
“He can’t know.”
“You understand that makes this considerably harder.”
“I know.”
Unable to remain seated any longer, Adam pushed himself from the chair and crossed towards the window, phone pressed tightly against his ear. Below, the driveway lay empty beneath the rain, its black surface shining beneath the security lights; beyond it, the gates remained closed, the street deserted, every parked car exactly where it should have been.
Still, Adam found himself checking.
“I want security around the whole family,” he said, watching rainwater snake down the glass. “But Lando needs someone closer.”
“How close?”
“Close enough to know where he is, who he’s with, whether someone is following him.”
“That’s surveillance.”
“Call it whatever you want.”
“And Lando knows you’re arranging this?”
“No.”
Silence answered him.
What Adam was asking for sounded worse each time Hamilton forced him to say it aloud, but somewhere upstairs, his son was sleeping beneath the same roof as a man who had failed to notice strangers following him with a camera.
That mistake would not happen twice.
“I don’t want some obvious security detail trailing him across campus,” Adam continued. “No suits, no car sitting outside his accommodation, no stranger appearing behind him everywhere he goes. The second Lando thinks he’s being watched, he’ll start asking questions.”
“So what exactly do you want?”
“Someone who belongs there.”
On the other end of the line, Hamilton went quiet.
Adam turned from the window. “Someone his age—or close enough that nobody looks twice. Someone who can blend in with the other students, attend the same places, stay close without making it obvious that staying close is the entire point.”
“You’re asking me for an undercover guard.”
“Yes.”
“Someone your son will believe is just another student.”
“Yes.”
Hamilton exhaled slowly. “And how exactly do you expect me to keep someone close enough to protect him without Lando wondering why the same stranger keeps appearing everywhere he goes?”
Adam’s gaze travelled across the study, settling absently on one of the university accommodation forms Lando had left amongst the papers on his desk.
An idea began to take shape.
“Give him a reason to be there.”
“What kind of reason?”
“Enrol him.”
Another silence.
“At the university?”
“If that’s what it takes.”
“Adam—”
“Same course, same classes, I don’t care. Arrange whatever you need to arrange.”
“That gets him onto campus. It doesn’t guarantee he’ll be anywhere near Lando when it matters.”
Adam looked again at the accommodation paperwork.
“No,” he murmured. “It doesn’t.”
What he needed wasn’t someone who could follow Lando.
He needed someone who wouldn’t have to.
“His accommodation.”
Hamilton was silent for a beat. “What about it?”
“Put them together.”
“What?”
“Same building. Same floor.” Adam paused, his eyes remaining on the paperwork. Then, more decisively, “Same room, if you can manage it.”
A humourless breath left Hamilton. “You don’t ask for much.”
“I’m not asking for much. I’m asking you to keep my son alive.”
That silenced him.
For several seconds, Adam heard nothing but the faint static of the call and the rain whispering against the window.
“You realise what you’re actually asking this person to do?” Hamilton said eventually.
“Protect him.”
“No. I’m asking whether you understand the cover.” Hamilton’s voice had hardened. “If you want this to work, he can’t just sleep in the same room and follow Lando to class. He has to talk to him. Spend time with him. Give him reasons not to question why he’s always around.”
Adam said nothing.
“He’ll have to become his friend.”
The word sat uncomfortably between them.
Friend.
For Lando to feel safe around this person, he would first have to trust him—and Adam would know, from the very beginning, that the trust had been built upon a lie.
“What happens when Lando actually trusts him?” Hamilton asked.
Against the window, Adam caught the faint outline of his own reflection, fractured by the trails of rain running down the glass.
His answer took longer than it should have.
“Then he trusts him.”
“And when he finds out?”
Adam’s jaw tightened.
“He won’t.”
Hamilton gave a quiet sigh, the kind that suggested he had several objections left and had already realised none of them would change Adam’s mind.
“I may have someone.”
Adam lifted his head. “Who?”
“Oscar.”
The name meant nothing to him.
Adam waited for Hamilton to continue—for a surname, a qualification, anything that might explain why this particular stranger had been offered so readily—but the silence on the other end stretched on.
“Oscar who?”
“For now?” A faint rustle travelled through the speaker. “Oscar is enough.”
Adam’s expression hardened. Under any other circumstances, that answer alone would have been enough for him to end the conversation. He did not make a habit of placing his trust in people without surnames, histories or credentials he could verify for himself, and he certainly didn’t place his family in their hands.
Tonight, however, Zak had shown him exactly how little his usual rules were worth.
“How old?”
“Close enough to Lando that no one at the university will question it.”
“Experience?”
“More than someone his age should have.”
With what little patience remained beginning to fray, Adam pushed himself away from the window and paced towards his desk. “Hamilton.”
“What?”
“I’m not asking you for riddles.” His hand came to rest against the polished wood, fingers spreading over its surface. “I’m asking whether you trust this person with my son’s life.”
For once, Hamilton didn’t pause.
“Yes.”
The answer stopped Adam mid-step.
The certainty coming from Hamilton was enough for Adam to trust this Oscar kid.
Beyond the windows, rain swept across London in silver sheets, smearing buildings, headlights and streetlamps into trembling streaks of colour. Adam watched them distort against the glass for a moment, his own reflection suspended amongst them—a dark silhouette trapped somewhere between the safety of his home and the city beyond it.
“How long will you need?”
“That depends on how convincing you want this to be.”
“Completely.”
“Then give me until Lando moves.”
Adam glanced towards the accommodation paperwork scattered across his desk. Seven days. A week for Hamilton to manufacture an entire life convincing enough to withstand the curiosity of a nineteen-year-old who would be sleeping only metres away from it.
“Can you do it?”
“I can have Oscar enrolled and the accommodation arranged before Lando arrives. The rest is up to him.”
Adam’s fingers closed around the edge of the desk. “I want him there first.”
“How much earlier?”
“A day should be enough.” His eyes travelled over the room number printed near the top of Lando’s accommodation form. “When Lando walks through that door, Oscar should already belong there. Clothes in the wardrobe, books on the desk, something half-unpacked—I don’t care. I want it to look like chance.”
For several seconds, neither man spoke.
Twenty-eight days.
Until tonight, the end of the month had been nothing more than another square on a calendar. Now Adam could almost feel the days beginning to fall away, one after another, an invisible clock set into motion the moment Zak had named his deadline.
Twenty-eight days to find three million dollars.
Seven before Lando left home.
Which meant twenty-one days in which Oscar would be the only thing standing between Adam’s son and a threat Lando didn’t even know existed.
“Make sure he understands one thing.”
“What?”
“Lando cannot know he’s security.”
“He’ll understand.”
“I mean it, Hamilton.” Adam’s voice sharpened. “No hovering around him like a bodyguard, no disappearing every five minutes to make reports, no treating him like someone he’s been assigned to protect. From the moment they meet, Oscar is exactly who his cover says he is.”
“A student.”
“A student,” Adam repeated.
Adam looked again at the accommodation paperwork.
A building.
A floor.
A room number.
Until tonight, they had been meaningless details printed in black ink, little more than boxes to tick before Lando could begin the life he had been impatiently waiting for. Now Adam saw entrances and exits, corridors and windows, distances and blind spots.
What had once represented independence had become a security problem.
“What you’re asking for isn’t simple,” Hamilton said.
“Neither is keeping him alive.”
The words escaped before Adam could soften them.
They hung between them.
Keeping him alive.
Until then, Adam had avoided giving the fear a name. Protection. Security. Precaution. Clean, manageable words that kept the ugliest possibilities at a comfortable distance. Yet alone in the darkness of his study, with rain whispering against the windows and Lando moving somewhere safely above him, the truth sounded different when spoken aloud.
Until tonight, Adam had avoided giving the fear a name, preferring protection, security, precaution—clean, manageable words that allowed him to keep the ugliest possibilities at a comfortable distance. Yet here, alone in the darkness of his study, with rain whispering against the windows and the familiar sounds of Lando moving somewhere safely above him, those words no longer seemed sufficient. Zak had photographed his son without difficulty, carried that photograph into the warehouse and placed it between them like another piece of evidence, all for the purpose of demonstrating one terrifyingly simple fact: if they could reach Lando with a camera, Adam had no reason to believe they couldn’t reach him with something worse.
For a while, neither man spoke, and in the silence stretching across the line, Adam found himself staring through the rain-streaked glass towards the empty driveway below.
Eventually, Hamilton broke it. “You understand what this means for Oscar.”
Adam’s gaze remained on the street beyond the gates. “What?”
“If you want this cover to hold, he won’t just be protecting Lando; he’ll be lying to him every day, sometimes about things that matter and sometimes about things so ordinary Lando won’t even think to question them.”
Although Adam had already understood that in theory, hearing Hamilton reduce the arrangement to what it actually required left an unpleasant weight sitting beneath his ribs. “I know.”
“Do you?” Hamilton pressed. “Because we’re not talking about a man following him from across the street. They’ll be living together, studying together, spending enough time around each other that Lando stops questioning why Oscar is there at all. Every conversation they have gives him another detail to remember, every question requires an answer consistent with the last, and every time something goes wrong, Oscar has to protect him without revealing that protecting him is the reason he’s there.”
Adam’s fingers tightened around the phone. “I said I know.”
“And if they become friends?”
The question caught somewhere Adam hadn’t expected it to.
With his attention lifting instinctively towards the ceiling, he pictured Lando upstairs amongst the clutter of his half-packed bedroom, entirely unaware that his father was downstairs arranging the arrival of someone he might eventually come to trust. Until now, Adam had thought of Oscar in practical terms—a body between Lando and danger, a pair of trained eyes where Adam’s could no longer be, someone capable of noticing the threats his son never would. Friendship had been little more than another component of the cover, useful precisely because it gave Oscar a reason to remain close.
Hamilton’s question forced him to consider what that would mean for Lando.
“Then they become friends,” Adam answered eventually.
“And if Lando trusts him?”
Against the darkened window, Adam’s reflection hovered amongst the fractured lights of the city, distorted wherever rain travelled down the glass. Trust was exactly what he had asked Hamilton to manufacture, though until that moment he had managed to think of it as something clinical: a shared room, overlapping classes, enough ordinary encounters to make Oscar’s constant presence feel natural rather than deliberate. Yet trust wasn’t built from logistics alone. It would come from late-night conversations Adam would never hear, private jokes he would never understand, meals shared between classes and countless insignificant moments that neither boy would think important enough to remember.
Except one of them would know those moments had only been possible because Adam had put him there.
What Lando would experience as chance, Oscar would understand as an assignment; what Lando might eventually call friendship, Oscar would know had begun with a photograph, a fabricated history and a phone call made in the middle of the night.
The thought settled uneasily in Adam’s chest.
When he finally answered, his voice was quieter.
“Then he’s done his job.”