The water helped.

Phei sank deeper into the sunken pool, letting the steaming heat soak into muscles that felt like they'd been tenderized by a meat mallet wielded by seven very enthusiastic sadists. The amber lighting had dimmed to a low, forgiving glow, shadows curling protectively around the bathroom to hide the worst of the damage.

The worst of him.

He hissed through clenched teeth as another wound pulled itself together—the long, ugly gash along his ribs where a nailed bat had kissed him a little too intimately, skin knitting with that eerie, invisible tug like phantom sutures were working overtime. His Healing Touch thrummed beneath the surface, sluggish but stubborn, accelerated by the heat.

But Level 1 was a cruel joke against this kind of carnage.

He looked like he'd lost a cage match with a combine harvester and the harvester had been personally offended.

Technically, he thought with the blackest sliver of humor, I won. I'm breathing. You should see the other guy.

The bruise blooming across his cheek was shifting from corpse-purple to sickly yellow at the edges.

The split lip had sealed, but it still throbbed like a bad memory. Countless smaller lacerations closed one by one, his body cannibalizing its own reserves to patch the wreckage seven masked Legacy heirs had spent three hours inflicting.

It was like watching a vampire regenerate after a particularly zealous staking.

Except vampires probably didn't whimper like abandoned puppies every time they tried to breathe.

"Fuck," Phei exhaled, shifting his weight and instantly regretting every decision that had led to this moment. "Fuck, fuck, fuck—"

Sierra was coming.

Probably dragging Maddie along like a chaotic plus-one, because the Demoness of Chaos—title fully earned—could no more resist high drama than a moth could resist a flamethrower. "My boyfriend vanished for four hours" was practically catnip to her.

She'd burst in clutching her inevitable Starbucks, zero filter engaged, and immediately start cataloguing his body with that filthy mouth of hers—something about how the bruises made him look dangerously edible, or proposing a threesome as physical therapy, or whatever glorious madness her brain vomited up next.

And he absolutely, under no circumstances, could let either of them see him like this.

Thirty-five minutes. Maybe thirty.

He needed to heal enough to sell the lie.

Lost my phone. Meeting got cancelled. Had to handle something.

All technically accurate.

Just omitting the part where "something" involved escaping a coordinated kidnapping and systematic beating.

His phone—the Samsung—sat on the marble ledge beside the pool. Contacts glowing softly in the steam.

Including one name.

Phei stared at it.

Then picked it up and dialed Maya.

She answered before the first ring completed.

"Phei? Oh god, are you—I mean, obviously you're okay because you called Sierra and she said you were okay but okay can mean a lot of things, like technically 'okay' just means 'not dead' which is a pretty low bar if you think about it, and I've been sitting here in this van trying not to spiral but I'm definitely spiraling a little bit because—"

"Maya."

She stopped. He could practically hear the wince.

"Right. Sorry. Rambling. I do that when I'm—anyway. You called. Which is. Good? I think? Unless something's wrong, in which case—"

"I called because I wanted to thank you."

Silence.

Then, softer: "Oh~"

"You mobilized an entire private army in twenty minutes. Rolled up with thirty professional badasses to search a construction site for someone you barely know. That's not nothing, Maya."

"I mean, I do know you. Kind of. We've had, like, multiple conversations now, which is more than I have with most people honestly, and you ate my terrible cookie without dying which feels weirdly significant somehow—"

"It was a culinary war crime."

"It really was. I'm genuinely shocked you survived. Should probably put that on my resumé. 'Baking skills: non-lethal.' Very low bar but I'm clearing it." A pause. "And you're not someone I barely know. You're… you."

The words landed soft and honest, and something twisted gently in Phei's chest.

"Maya."

"Yeah?"

"Can I tell you something?"

"Anything. Obviously. I mean, you could tell me you're secretly three raccoons in a trenchcoat and I'd just be like 'that explains so much actually'—"

"Something I'm not telling Sierra. Or Maddie. Or anyone else."

The rambling stopped dead.

When she spoke again, her voice was different—still soft, still warm, but stripped of the nervous chatter. Focused. Present.

"Tell me."

[MAYA'S VAN – SIMULTANEOUSLY]

The interior was dark, soundproofed, expensive.

Tinted windows turned Paradise's glittering skyline into abstract streaks of light. Maya sat perfectly still in the back seat, phone pressed to her ear, posture composed in a way that would have stunned anyone who knew her only as Ashford Elite's silver-haired disaster.

No fidgeting.

No nervous laughter.

No word-vomit.

Just stillness.

And listening.

Like a predator that had finally scented prey.

"Can I tell you something?" his voice had come through. "Something I'm not telling Sierra. Or Maddie. Or anyone else."

Maya's eyes closed.

There it is.

He's choosing me.

Over her.

Over all of them.

She let none of the triumph reach her voice. Kept it warm, open, gently concerned—the Maya everyone expected.

The silver-haired girl they all dismissed as harmless chaos.

The soft-voiced mess who supposedly couldn't hide a feeling if her life depended on it.

The one nobody ever saw coming.

"Tell me," She said, and the words were soft, sincere, perfect.

[PHEI'S BATHROOM]

"I was there."

"What?"

"At the construction site." Phei stared at the steam curling toward the ceiling. "I was there. For hours."

"But you said—on the phone, you said the meeting got cancelled—"

"It did. Sort of. The texts from Brett were real. The meeting was real. But it wasn't what he claimed."

He could hear her breathing—steady, waiting.

"I didn't go straight to the site. Went to his house first—thought I'd scope it, see what he actually wanted before walking into anything blind. But they were ready for that. All seven of them. Brett, Derek, Zack, Kyle, Anderson—the full lineup. They had thugs waiting."

"Phei—"

"They grabbed me. Threw me in a van. Took me to the site and spent three hours turning me into a punching bag while they waited for someone, they kept calling their 'Boss' to decide my fate."

His voice stayed flat. Clinical. Like he was dictating a police report about someone else's body.

"Long story short… I escaped. One of them got sloppy, I got loose, ran. They chased—thugs with bats and masks, herding me toward the Derek estate where more were waiting."

He paused.

"And when I'd pulled myself out after they caught me again... then five vans rolled up. Thirty guys in suits who looked like they ate special forces for breakfast."

"My team," Maya said quietly.

"Your team. The hired muscle took one look and scattered. Didn't even fight—just ran. I used the distraction to vanish."

[MAYA'S VAN]

They beat him.

For three hours.

While I was on the phone, mobilizing, worrying.

Maya's free hand curled into a fist on the leather seat. Nails—painted soft pink, the color of someone harmless—bit crescents into her palm.

The rambling girl would have gasped. Would have dissolved into horrified babble about how awful, how terrifying, how could they—

The girl underneath was already cataloguing.

Seven Legacy heirs. Personally involved. Coordinated. Arrogant enough to be on-site. That meant traces. DNA. Witnesses. Security footage they thought they'd erased.

They always left something.

And now I have names.

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