Chapter 145: WANTED! [FIXED!]

Liam looked Arthur square in the eyes, unbothered, sizing him up without any real urgency. "I thought you’d be bigger."

Arthur didn’t react to the jab. No flicker of irritation, no defensive posturing — just a small, patient chuckle, the kind of reaction that suggested taunting wasn’t a language he bothered speaking.

"You’re a pawn in a game far bigger than you can currently comprehend," Arthur said, calm and measured. "I know you’re having relations with Mrs. Harriet."

Liam raised an eyebrow. "Relations? What are you, 70?"

He kept his expression neutral otherwise, giving nothing away. There was no version of this conversation where confirming or denying anything served him, so he simply let the comment hang there, unanswered.

Arthur studied him for a moment, unbothered by the deflection.

"Is there somewhere you’d prefer we speak? Somewhere more private."

Liam considered it. He could walk away right now, easily, and lose nothing by doing so. But there was something in the offer worth weighing — if Arthur actually had something concrete, something that could be leveraged against Mrs. Harriet later if the situation called for it, walking away now meant losing that potential entirely.

"Fine," Liam said finally. "Follow me."

They walked back together, the silence between them comfortable in a way Liam found mildly unsettling, and eventually made their way into the hotel’s restaurant — upscale, quiet, the kind of place that matched the general tone of the building it sat inside.

Arthur took a seat across from him, and Liam clocked the posture instantly — straight-backed, unhurried, every movement carrying the specific ease of someone who’d never once had to worry about money growing up.

There was an elegance to it that Liam recognized without quite being able to name.

"I’ve got somewhere to be tonight," Liam said, sitting across from him. "So don’t get comfortable thinking this is going to be a long conversation."

"Understood."

Arthur got to it without much preamble, laying out a version of events built almost entirely on speculation dressed up as certainty — his belief that Mrs. Harriet was involved in an affair, framed as an inevitability rather than a suspicion. A woman of her caliber, he suggested, simply didn’t remain celibate in a marriage as hollow as her husband’s had become. It wasn’t possible, in his estimation.

Liam listened, unimpressed, before finally cutting in. "Why are you so fixated on her?"

Arthur answered without hesitation, calm and matter-of-fact. "Because Mrs. Harriet is the single weakness my brother has. And I intend to protect him from that weakness."

Liam sat with that for a second, genuinely trying to locate some version of relatability in the statement and coming up empty. He’d grown up in a home built on the opposite foundation entirely — two parents who’d have done anything for each other, no calculation, no protective scheming, none of whatever twisted architecture Arthur was currently operating inside of.

Whatever this was, it wasn’t protection in any form Liam recognized. It read, more than anything, like obsession dressed up in loyalty.

"You’ve got a strange fixation on your brother," Liam said flatly. "This isn’t protection. This is something else."

Arthur’s expression didn’t shift.

Liam let it go, deciding it wasn’t worth pursuing further, and pivoted instead to the part that actually mattered to him. "I know you’re the reason I lost my job."

Something flickered behind Arthur’s eyes at that, though he said nothing to confirm it.

"And Mrs. Harriet," Liam continued, "is the only reason I haven’t already taken this to court and buried your firm’s name in the process."

Arthur chuckled, low and unbothered, leaning back slightly in his chair. "I wasn’t worried about that possibility, Liam. I had a card in reserve that would have swayed things decisively in my favor. You wouldn’t have won, had it gone to court."

"Is that so?"

"Did you really believe I’d leave you an exploitable weakness without accounting for it?" Arthur’s smile sharpened slightly. "That I’d hand you an illusion of leverage without ensuring it never became real leverage at all? I’m not a novice, Liam. I don’t make mistakes that expose the firm to that kind of risk."

Liam raised an eyebrow, waiting.

Arthur clicked his tongue, almost amused at having to spell it out. "Mrs. Harriet is the only reason you’re not currently buried under something far worse than a termination."

"What’s the card."

Arthur’s smile widened slightly, but he offered nothing further, letting the silence answer for him.

Liam turned the question over privately, running through every possibility he could think of, coming up with nothing solid enough to hang his suspicion on.

It never once occurred to him that the answer sitting behind Arthur’s smile had a name he already knew intimately. It was Sara.

-

Darren woke up slow, blinking against the low light filtering in through the curtains, the moonlight was shining directly at him and the first thing he registered was the absence of any noise that would suggest Liam nearby. No footsteps. No conversation. No general disturbance that usually came attached to Liam being somewhere in the same space.

Gone, then. Not that this was surprising — a grown man could come and go as he pleased, and Darren had zero intention of playing babysitter to someone with more money than sense.

He sat up and glanced over toward Mateo, still passed out cold on the couch, and immediately had to stifle a laugh.

The kid was drooling. Fully, unapologetically drooling, a small dark patch forming on the bed spread beneath his mouth, one arm flung dramatically over his face like he’d fought off sleep and lost the battle mid-motion.

Darren couldn’t resist. He grabbed his phone and snapped a picture, angling it to fully capture the drool situation in all its glory, then sat there looking at it for a second longer than strictly necessary, grinning.

Immature. Absolutely. But this was core memory material, and Darren had zero regrets about preserving it for future use.

He set the phone down and glanced around the suite again, confirming there was still no sign of Liam anywhere. Bathroom, empty. Bedroom, empty. Balcony door slightly ajar, the man himself nowhere in sight.

Darren sighed, dropping back onto the armchair. There wasn’t much point worrying about it — Liam wasn’t a kid who needed tracking, and whatever he was off doing at this hour was his business.

Sleep, unfortunately, refused to come back easily now that he was up, so Darren grabbed the remote instead and flipped the TV on, scrolling until he landed on the news. Movies weren’t really his thing, never had been, and at this hour there wasn’t much else worth watching anyway.

The anchor was midway through some segment on local crime, the usual rundown of break-ins and minor disputes that barely registered as noteworthy anymore. Darren let it play in the background, only half paying attention, until the tone shifted and a more serious graphic filled the screen.

[BREAKING: TWO WANTED IN CONNECTION WITH CONVENIENCE STORE CLERK MURDER]

Darren’s attention sharpened slightly, though he still assumed it was just another unfortunate, unremarkable story — the kind that played on repeat in cities like this, criminals doing criminal things, nothing that touched his life directly.

Then the images came up.

The first was clear enough — a heavily tattooed man, Salvadoran, name displayed beneath his photo. Enrique Alvarado. Wanted for questioning in connection with the murder, last seen fleeing the scene alongside an unidentified accomplice.

The second image was blurry, grainy security footage blown up past the point of real clarity, features mostly obscured by shadow and motion blur.

But Darren didn’t need clarity.

He recognized the posture instantly — that specific, slightly hunched lean Drake had always carried, shoulders curved forward in a way that had never changed no matter how many years passed. Darren had seen that exact stance a thousand times growing up, walking beside him down streets neither of them should’ve been on half as often as they were.

"Drake."

Darren clicked his tongue in irritation, sitting up straighter now, all traces of sleepiness gone.

So Drake wasn’t just running with the same crowd Darren remembered from years back — he was apparently deep enough into it now to be wanted for murder. And whoever the Salvadoran was standing beside him in that footage, wanted right alongside him, meant Drake wasn’t operating alone anymore either.

Whatever this was, it had grown into something with actual weight behind it, the kind of trouble that didn’t stay contained to one street corner or one bad decision.

Darren sat there for a long moment, staring at the frozen image on the screen, processing the fact that the same man he’d bumped into at a grocery store just days ago — the same man who’d hung around expecting a free ride and a paid tab out of nothing but old nostalgia — was now sitting at the center of a murder investigation.

He glanced over at Mateo, still peacefully unconscious, drool patch steadily expanding.

Whatever this was, it had nothing to do with either of them.

Darren told himself that, twice, and didn’t entirely believe it either time.