Chapter 53: Desperate Care
The gym was a tomb. The heavy bag hung motionless in the center of the ring, a forgotten pendulum. The only sound was the intermittent drip from a leaky pipe in the back, a metronome counting down the seconds since Reese had sent that picture of the wrecked lab. He’d cleaned up. Called for a van. Left Kovacs and the others to nurse their concussions and their pride. He’d driven here through rain-slicked streets that reflected the city’s neon like oil on a puddle.
He stood now just inside the door, the damp of his jacket leaching into the dry, still air. The scent of leather wrap and sharp antiseptic did nothing to clean the smell of failure from his skin. He felt Batman’s touch on his shoulder again, the unyielding cold of the armor beneath his fingers. He heard the modulated voice: He’s diluting your value.
The door to Roman’s office was ajar, a thin blade of yellow light cutting across the polished floor.
Reese didn’t knock.
He pushed it open and stepped inside. Roman’s back was to him, silhouetted against the wall of glass that formed the far side of the office. Beyond, Gotham sprawled, a diorama of its own misery, pinpricks of light fighting a losing battle against the dark. Roman was gazing out, a crystal glass of something dark cradled in his hand. He didn’t turn.
“The product?” Roman asked, his voice quiet.
“Gone. Spilled, contaminated, or swept up by the GCPD sirens I heard five minutes after he left.” Reese’s own voice sounded hollow to his ears. “Kovacs has a broken rib. The others will live. Mostly ego damage.”
Roman took a slow sip. “And your assessment?”
Reese closed the door softly behind him. The plush carpet swallowed the sound. “He’s playing the game. Took the bait. Came to me specifically, not to the shipment two blocks over. He’s focused.”
“On you.”
“On the tool,” Reese corrected, a reflex. But the word felt alien now, a shell. He walked further into the room, his boots silent on the carpet. He stopped a few feet from Roman, close enough to see the tension in the set of his broad shoulders beneath the dark silk shirt. “He thinks he’s getting in my head.”
Roman finally turned. The low light from the city carved his face into a landscape of severe angles and deep shadow. His blue eyes were unreadable, analytical. They swept over Reese, taking in the dirt on his jeans, the tense line of his jaw, the way his hands were shoved into his pockets like he was hiding a tremor.
“Is he?” Roman asked.
Reese met his gaze. The lie was a stone on his tongue. He swallowed it. The truth was heavier. “He’s trying. Talking about you. About how you use things up. How you’ll break me.” He gave a short, brittle laugh. “Standard issue psychological warfare. Kid’s stuff.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed a fraction. He placed his glass on the desk with a precise click. “You touched him.”
It wasn’t a question. Reese felt a cold thread pull tight in his gut. He’d mentioned the conversation, the taunts. He hadn’t described the specific, brazen contact. He’d forgotten, for a moment, that Roman saw everything. “I brushed dust off his shoulder. To fuck with him.”
“To provoke him.”
“To show him he doesn’t scare me.” Reese’s voice gained an edge, a defensive heat. “You wanted him focused on me. Mission accomplished.”
Roman stepped closer. The space between them shrunk, charged with a new, volatile energy. The scent of him—expensive soap, fine whiskey, and that underlying coldness like polished stone—filled Reese’s senses. “You laid your hands on him.” His voice was a low vibration. “You invaded his space. To prove a point. To me? Or to him?”
The question hung in the air. Reese’s breath hitched. The carefully constructed wall of defiance, of sardonic control, developed a hairline fracture. He saw the shadow on the rainy roof. He felt the unyielding armor. He remembered the absolute silence after his touch. A challenge. A claiming.
He hadn’t done it just for the plan.
He’d done it because in that moment, standing in the wreckage Batman had made, he needed to feel something solid. He needed to feel Roman. And Batman was the closest thing to him in the room.
“I needed to touch something real,” Reese said, the words torn from him, raw and too honest. He wasn’t looking at Roman anymore; he was staring at a point past his shoulder, at the city lights. “He’s not real. He’s a story. A shadow. You’re real.”
The admission echoed in the quiet office. It was the most vulnerable thing he’d ever said to Roman Sionis.
Roman was on him in two strides. There was no prelude, no gentle lead. One hand fisted in the front of Reese’s jacket, yanking him forward. The other closed around the back of his neck, fingers digging into the tense muscles there. The grip was crushing, dominant, absolute. Reese gasped, his hands coming up instinctively to brace against Roman’s chest, but he didn’t push. He sank into the hold.
“He’s in your head,” Roman growled, his face inches away. The cold analysis was gone, replaced by something molten, possessive. “He’s planted his doubt. And you brought it here. To me.”
“I brought myself here,” Reese breathed, his body arching into Roman’s, needing the pressure, the solidity. “I need you to fuck it out of me.”
A raw, stark hunger flashed in Roman’s eyes. It was the look he got before he broke a business rival, before he ordered a hit. It was pure, undiluted ownership. “You are mine,” he stated, the words final. “Every thought. Every breath. Every shudder. You don’t get to have doubts. I own them too.”
He shoved Reese backwards. Reese stumbled, caught off balance, until his lower back hit the sharp edge of Roman’s massive desk. Ledgers and a brass lamp rattled. Roman’s hands were on his belt, wrenching it open with a brutal efficiency. The button of his jeans popped, the zip snarled down.
“Turn around,” Roman commanded, his voice like gravel.
Reese turned, his hands flat on the cool, polished wood of the desk. He looked out at the city, his reflection a pale, fractured ghost in the dark glass. Behind him, Roman yanked his jeans and boxers down to his thighs in one violent pull. The air was cold on his exposed skin. He was exposed, bent over the desk of Gotham’s most dangerous man, and a tremor of want—sharp and desperate—went through him.
He heard the rustle of clothing, the brief, slick sound of Roman spitting into his palm. There was no preparation, no gentleness. Roman’s hand gripped his hip, hard enough to bruise. The broad, blunt head of his cock pressed against him, and then Roman was pushing inside, a relentless, searing invasion.
Reese cried out, his forehead dropping to the desk. It hurt. It was too much, too fast, a stark claiming that burned away everything else—the lab, the failure, Batman’s voice, the doubt. There was only this stretch, this fullness, this brutal connection. Roman buried himself to the hilt in one long, devastating thrust, and Reese saw stars explode behind his eyes.
“He doesn’t own this,” Roman snarled in his ear, his body a cage of heat and muscle around Reese. “He doesn’t get to have a piece of you. This cunt is mine.” He pulled back almost all the way and slammed forward again, making the desk shudder.
The profanity, the crude ownership, tore a ragged moan from Reese’s throat. He pushed back, meeting the next thrust, welcoming the rough, pounding rhythm. It was punishment and consecration. Roman’s hand left his hip and snaked around his front, fingers pushing rough past the waistband of his clothes, finding his clit. The touch was calloused, demanding, matching the brutal pace of his fucking.
“You come when I say,” Roman ordered, his fingers working him with a ruthless precision. “You come because I allow it. Because I make you.”
The dual assault was overwhelming. The deep, driving penetration, the sharp, focused friction on his clit—it was too much, a sensory overload that short-circuited thought. Reese’s knuckles were white where he gripped the desk edge. Pleasure, sharp as shattered glass, tore through him, building with terrifying speed. He tried to fight it, to hold back, but Roman’s fingers were relentless, his thrusts perfectly angled to drag against that spot inside that made his vision blur.
“Roman—” he gasped, a warning, a plea.
“Now,” Roman growled.
It wasn’t a choice. His body snapped, convulsing around the cock inside him. An electric, violent orgasm ripped through him, milking Roman deep in his cunt as he cried out, soundless against the wood. Roman didn’t stop. He fucked him through it, through the shuddering, sensitive aftershocks, his pace unyielding. The overstimulation was agony, was ecstasy, a white-hot wire of sensation that lit up every nerve ending.
“Again,” Roman commanded, his own breath becoming harsh in Reese’s ear. His thumb pressed harder, circling with a filthy, knowing pressure.
Tears of pure sensory overload leaked from Reese’s eyes, smearing the reflection in the window. He was being unmade, stripped down to raw, shivering need. Another peak, sharper than the first, built and crashed over him, wracking his body with helpless tremors. He sobbed, a broken, wet sound.
Still, Roman didn’t stop. He was a machine, a force of nature, pounding into him, owning him completely. The desk creaked in protest. The city lights blurred into streaked smears of color. Reese was nothing but a vessel, a body being used with a terrifying, glorious mastery.
Roman’s rhythm began to fracture. His thrusts lost their military precision, becoming shorter, harder, desperate. His grip on Reese’s hip was iron. He buried his face in the side of Reese’s neck, his teeth scraping the skin.
“Mine,” he grunted, the word a primal, guttural claim with each drive of his hips. “Every. Fucking. Inch.”
With a final, deep snarl, Roman jammed himself as deep as he could go and held there. Reese felt the hot, pulsing spill of his come flooding inside him, a brand, a claim written in the most intimate ink. Roman shuddered against him, his full weight pressing Reese into the desk.
For a long moment, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing and the distant hum of the city. Reese’s legs were liquid, useless. He would have collapsed if Roman hadn’t been holding him up.
Slowly, Roman softened inside him. He withdrew, the loss making Reese whimper softly. Roman’s hand left his hip, came up to cradle his head, fingers tangling in his sweaty hair. It was an oddly tender gesture amidst the violence. He pressed a kiss, hard and possessive, to the side of Reese’s head.
“Clean yourself up,” Roman murmured, his voice rough but calm now, the storm passed. He gently pulled Reese’s clothing back into place with a practicality that was almost more intimate than the sex had been.
Reese pushed himself upright, his limbs trembling violently. He turned, leaning heavily against the desk for support. Roman was already re-buttoning his own trousers, his face a mask of restored composure. Only the faint sheen of sweat on his brow and the dark, satisfied gleam in his eyes betrayed what had just happened.
“He doesn’t have this,” Roman said quietly, meeting Reese’s drained, shattered gaze. “He never will.”
Reese nodded, unable to speak. The doubts were gone. Burnt out. In their place was a hollowed-out certainty, a profound and weary truth. He was owned. Down to his soul.
Roman walked to the decanter, poured two fresh fingers of whiskey, and brought one over to Reese. His hand was steady. “Tomorrow,” he said, as if discussing a shipment of imported silk, “you’ll go to the Cherry Top Lounge. The owner has been hesitant about our new protection rates. You’ll explain them to him. Clearly.”
Reese took the glass, his own hand shaking so badly the liquid sloshed. He swallowed it in one go, the burn a welcome anchor. “Clearly,” he echoed, his voice hoarse.
Roman smiled, a thin, sharp curve of his lips. He cupped Reese’s cheek, his thumb wiping away a stray tear track. “Good boy.”
The words should have felt demeaning. They didn’t. They felt like a suture, closing a wound. Reese leaned into the touch for a second, then straightened, forcing his legs to lock, his spine to stiffen.
He was Roman Sionis’s instrument. He was sharp. He was used.
And in the shattered quiet of his own mind, he knew Batman was wrong. He wasn’t being worn down. He was being tempered. And the fire was his alone to bear.
And the fire was his alone to bear.
He wore it like a bruise the next morning, a tender ache that pulsed in time with his heartbeat as he pushed through the smoky haze of the Cherry Top Lounge. His movements were fluid, a direct contradiction to the stiffness underneath his clothes. “See, Jimmy,” Reese said, leaning on the polished bar, his voice a conspiratorial rasp. “It’s not a ‘rate increase.’ It’s a ‘prosperity reassessment.’ Sounds better on the books.”
The owner, a nervous man with a sheen of sweat on his bald head, wrung a dish towel. “Last month was fifteen percent. This pamphlet says twenty-two.”
“Inflation’s a killer, man.” Reese picked up a peanut from a bowl, tossed it in the air, and caught it in his mouth. “Think of the extra seven as a… commitment fee. To our continued friendship.” He crunched down hard. “You value this friendship, right Jimmy?”
Jimmy valued it. Twenty-two percent was agreed upon before Reese finished his club soda.
The work was steady, a brutal rhythm. Roman’s chess moves grew bolder, less about territory and more about infrastructure. Reese collected from businesses that hadn't even known they were under new management. He facilitated deliveries to warehouses the GCPD had stopped watching. He was a silent partner in a dozen pain clinics from the Diamond District to the Bowery. Each successful transaction was a brick cemented into Roman’s expanding fortress.
Meanwhile, Roman’s face began appearing in the society pages of the Gotham Gazette, not the police blotter. There was a grainy photo of him and Mayor Hemming at a charity gala for the Gotham Conservatory, both men in tuxedos, holding flutes of champagne. The caption called Roman a “philanthropic businessman.” Reese framed the clipping and hung it in the gym’s office, a private joke.
He was nursing a knuckle split from a recalcitrant bookie when Roman entered, shedding a tailored overcoat. Roman glanced at the framed article, then at Reese’s wrapped hand. “Sentiment doesn’t suit you,” Roman said, his tone flat.
“I’m a romantic,” Reese replied, flexing his fingers. “He looks good in a penguin suit. You clean up alright, too.”
Roman ignored the jab, moving to the window overlooking the gym floor below. “The GCPD Major Crimes unit has re-opened three cold cases. Ones with our fingerprints.”
“Metaphorically speaking,” Reese said.
“Literally speaking,” Roman corrected, turning. “Someone is talking to a new Deputy Commissioner. Someone ambitious.”
Pressure from the law was one thing. Pressure from rivals was another. A shipment of advanced firearm components—Roman’s latest diversification—was intercepted at the docks not by Batman, but by men wearing the rust-red colors of the Trigate Crew. They left the drivers in the harbor with broken knees and a message: “Sionis doesn’t own the water.”
Reese surveyed the damage in the gray dawn light, the Trigate tag sprayed in angry strokes across the shipping container. Kovacs, his rib taped, spat on the wet asphalt. “Fuckin’ bottom-feeders. They’ve been holed up in the warehouses off Sprang for years.”
“Not anymore,” Reese said, his voice quiet. The cold air bit his lungs. He touched the tender skin on his neck, hidden under his collar. “They’re expanding. They feel him pushing.” He turned to the crew. “Get this cleaned up. I want every piece of intel on Trigate’s movements, their cash flows, their favorite fucking brands of cigarette. They made this personal. We’ll make it intimate.”
Roman’s response to the provocation wasn’t a declaration of war. It was a precision strike. Two nights later, the Trigate Crew’s primary ledger keeper was found in a room at the Como Motel, alive but lacking the fingers required for counting. The message was industrial, clean, and devoid of Reese’s usual flair. It was pure Sionis.
The city itself seemed to tighten like a coiled spring. GCPD patrols became more frequent in Roman’s zones, a visible show of force that accomplished nothing but tension. Batman was a ghost, a rumor in the shadows. The bat was gone, but the cave-ins continued. A Sionis-backed alderman withdrew from a city planning vote, citing “family concerns.” A pipeline of laundered cash through a series of bistros in Otisburg developed a sudden, unexplained leak.
Reese sat in a parked car across from one of those bistros, watching a forensic accounting team from the Financial Crimes Unit move in and out. His phone buzzed. Roman. No greeting. “The mayor is hosting a late-night meeting at his residence. He requires… reassurance. His resolve is weakening under scrutiny.”
“What kind of reassurance?” Reese asked, watching a cop carry out a box of files.
“The kind that reminds him who pulled him from the gutter and who can put him back.” Roman’s voice was ice. “I have to be across town. You’ll go. You are my signature on this now.”
The weight of the statement settled on Reese’s shoulders. He was no longer just the muscle, the sharp edge. He was the imprimatur. “What am I reassuring him of, exactly?”
“That his daughter’s tuition payment, which mysteriously cleared his account this morning, remains our little secret.” Roman hung up.
Reese stared at the phone. The fire inside him, once a wild and defiant blaze, now felt like a banked coal: intense, contained, and ready to ignite whatever Roman pointed him at. He started the car, the engine’s growl a low promise in the quiet street. The work continued. The grip tightened. And the pressure, from all sides, began to sing a sharper, more desperate song.
And the pressure, from all sides, began to sing a sharper, more desperate song.
Mayor Hemming’s “residence” was a penthouse atop a refurbished financial district tower that tried too hard to whisper old money. It screamed new insecurity instead. Reese was buzzed up by a voice that couldn’t quite hide its tremor. The elevator ride was a study in muted gold and soft jazz. It felt like ascending into a gilded cage.
The Mayor himself answered the door, looking like a man who hadn’t slept in a week. His dressing gown was silk, but his eyes were frayed wool. “He said he’d send someone,” Hemming whispered, ushering Reese in and locking three separate deadbolts. “I didn’t think it would be you.”
“Disappointed?” Reese asked, strolling into the vast living room. Floor-to-ceiling windows offered a postcard view of a city that wanted to eat him alive. He didn’t sit. He stood by the grand piano, tapping a single discordant key. Plink.
“I’m just… It’s getting hot.” Hemming poured himself a whiskey with a shaking hand, spilling some on the lacquered bar. “The financial audit. The cold cases. It’s a coordinated pressure campaign. They’re not after me. They’re after him. Through me.”
“Sounds sticky,” Reese said, turning to face him. He kept his voice light, conversational. “But see, here’s the thing about pressure. It finds the weak spots.” He picked up a heavy crystal ashtray, weighing it in his hand. “You’ve got a weak spot. A daughter. At that pricey Swiss boarding school. Vallée de la Paix, right?”
The color drained from Hemming’s face. He looked suddenly nauseous.
“Beautiful campus,” Reese continued, placing the ashtray back down with a soft, definitive clink. “All those Alps. Fresh air. Safe.” He met the Mayor’s terrified gaze. “Roman wants you to remember how that safety feels. The quiet. The security. He paid for that quiet.” He took a step closer. “Your job is to keep your mouth shut, vote the right way, and let that quiet continue. Can you do that, Leonard?”
Hemming swallowed, the sound loud in the silent room. He gave a jerky, frantic nod. “Yes. Of course. Tell him… tell him I understand.”
“Good boy.” Reese patted his shoulder, the gesture brotherly and grotesque. “Now, I’d offer you a drink, but you’ve already got one.” He glanced at the spilled amber liquid on the bar. “Clean that up. Looks desperate.”
He was almost at the door when his phone vibrated. Not a call. A three-word text from an encrypted number Roman used for emergencies: Sprang. Pinned. Trigate.
The casual ease evaporated. Reese’s spine straightened. He didn’t run. He moved with a sudden, focused velocity, yanking the penthouse door open without another glance at the petrified mayor. The elevator descent felt glacial. His mind raced. Sprang Bridge warehouses. The components shipment. Trigate was hitting back, hard and direct.
His car, a low-slung black thing with a tuned engine, growled to life at the curb. He peeled away from the pristine curb, leaving the world of soft jazz and weak men behind. The city blurred into streaks of neon and shadow as he crossed into the industrial bowels near the Sprang River. The air changed, tasting of rust, cold water, and distant decay.
He parked two blocks from the address, a monolithic meatpacking plant from Gotham’s grittier past. The distant pop-pop-pop of handguns, flat and wrong in the vast space, guided him. He ran, a swift and silent shadow along algae-slick walls, pulling a compact 9mm from the small of his back. The big overhead door was slightly ajar, a sliver of ochre light bleeding out.
Inside, the scene was a tableau of chaos and bad geometry. The cavernous space was a forest of rusted overhead rails and defunct conveyor belts. Roman’s men—he recognized Kovacs, his face a mask of grim concentration—were using a flipped delivery truck as a makeshift barricade. Muzzle flashes sparked from behind rusted processing vats thirty yards away. Trigate had the high ground and the cover.
Kovacs saw him, his eyes widening. “Boss said you were coming! They came out of the fucking walls! They knew we’d be light!”
They knew. The thought was a cold spike. Reese ducked behind a steel pillar as a burst of gunfire chewed the concrete where he’d just been. He scanned the room. Six of Roman’s guys, maybe seven. At least double that for Trigate, positioned in a sweeping flank. A classic ambush. This wasn’t a territorial skirmish. This was a planned extermination.
“We’re fucking fish in a barrel here!” one of the younger guys, Marco, screamed, his voice cracking with panic.
“Then stop being a fish,” Reese snarled, leaning out to squeeze off two shots toward a flash in the darkness. A yelp of pain answered. “Kovacs! The overhead rail above the vats on the left! Can we bring it down?”
Kovacs glanced up, squinting. “Maybe! The supports are rusted to shit!”
“Do it.” Reese’s mind worked, calculating angles, fields of fire. A distraction. A break in their line. He had to create an opening for their retreat. He was about to signal a covering rush when the world changed.
The lights died.
Not all of them. A single, powerful spotlight, mounted high in the rafters and untouched by the carnage below, blazed to life with a sharp, electric thwump. It painted a stark white circle in the center of the killing floor, between the two factions. And into that circle, from the high shadows, dropped a shape.
It landed in a crouch, cape settling around it like a pooling of night. The gunfire from the Trigate positions stuttered, then ceased entirely. A stunned, brittle silence fell, broken only by the drip of a leaking pipe somewhere in the dark.
Batman rose to his full height in the spotlight, turning slowly. He seemed to take in the scene: the pinned Sionis crew behind the truck, the Trigate men hidden in the industrial gloom. His white lenses paused on Reese’s position behind the pillar.
“Evening, boys,” Reese called out, his voice echoing in the sudden quiet. He didn’t leave his cover. “You’re crashing a private party. Invitation only.”
One of the Trigate men, emboldened by numbers or stupidity, shouted from behind a vat. “This is gang business! Fuck off, freak!”
Batman’s head turned toward the voice. He didn’t speak. He moved.
It was a horrifying, beautiful thing to watch. He became a blur of black against the stark light, using the rails, the vats, the very architecture as his weapons. He didn’t gunfight. He disappeared into a shadow and reappeared behind a Trigate shooter, disarming him with a brutal twist that snapped bone. A smoke pellet detonated near another cluster, and from the cloud came the sharp, precise sounds of impact—the wet crunch of a jaw, the grunt of expelled air.
He was systematically dismantling the ambush, but not helping Roman’s men. He was a third force, a whirlwind of chaos tipping a already precarious balance into freefall.
Kovacs looked at Reese, eyes wild. “What the fuck is his play?”
Reese watched Batman move, his mind cold and clear. The plan had been to turn Batman’s focus into a weapon. Now, the weapon was in the room with them, and it was cutting down everyone. “His play,” Reese said, his voice low, “is to clean the board. Both sides.” He saw a Trigate man raise a shotgun toward Batman’s back. Without thinking, Reese leaned out and fired. The man dropped.
Batman, in the middle of disarming another attacker, paused. His white lenses found Reese again across the smoke-veiled space.
A silent communication passed between them in that split second. Acknowledgment. A fracturing of the script.
Then, from the high gantries, a new voice, amplified and distorted, rang out. “ENOUGH!”
All movement stopped. A figure stood on a catwalk above, backlit by a red emergency exit sign. He wore a rust-red jacket. The Trigate leader. He held not a gun, but a large, industrial remote control. “You think you win by beating my men?” he laughed, a harsh, metallic sound. “This whole place is wired! You all burn with it!”
His thumb hovered over a big red button.
Batman went perfectly still. Every gun in the room, those still held by conscious men, swung between the figure on the catwalk and the dark shape in the spotlight.
Reese saw it all with a terrifying clarity: the rafters lined with crude explosive packages, the tang of gasoline in the air he’d mistaken for machine oil. It was a dead man’s switch. A final, spectacular “fuck you.”
The Trigate leader was talking, ranting about territory and respect, but Reese stopped listening. He saw Kovacs, ready to make a hopeless break for it. He saw Marco, frozen in sheer terror. He saw Batman, calculating angles, his body coiled to move but with no clear path that wouldn’t end in a fireball.
And he saw his own hand, steady on his pistol, aiming not at the man with the detonator, but at the spotlight high in the rafters.
He exhaled, a slow, silent breath. He squeezed the trigger.
The light exploded in a shower of glass and sparks, plunging the warehouse into near-total darkness. The only illumination came from the weak red exit sign and the muzzle flashes that immediately erupted as panic took over.
“GO!” Reese roared into the chaos, shoving Kovacs toward a side door he’d clocked earlier. “NOW!”
In the disorienting dark, Batman moved like a phantom. Reese heard the amplified voice on the catwalk scream, then cut off with a sickening thud. He didn’t wait to see more. He fired twice toward the last Trigate muzzle flash to cover his men’s retreat, then sprinted for the door, his boots slipping on something wet and slick on the concrete.
He burst out into the cold night air, his men stumbling after him. They didn’t stop running until they were three blocks away, leaning against a graffiti-scarred wall, gasping. The meatpacking plant stood silent and dark behind them. No explosion came.
After a minute, Marco bent over and vomited. Kovacs looked at Reese, his face pale in the sodium streetlight. “He saved our asses in there. Batman.”
“No,” Reese corrected, his voice raw. He became aware of a stinging pain on his neck. His hand came away smeared with blood. A stray fragment from the spotlight, or a piece of concrete kicked up by a bullet. “He was cleaning the board. We just got out before he finished wiping.”
He leaned his head back against the cold brick, catching his breath. The adrenaline was receding, leaving a hollow, buzzing fatigue. The pain on his neck was sharp, familiar. He touched it again, the blood warm on his fingertips. It was in the same place Roman’s teeth had scraped the night he’d been claimed on the desk.
The symmetry was not lost on him. Two marks. Two claims. One in passion, one in violence.
His phone buzzed. A single message from Roman: Status.
Reese looked at the blood on his fingers, then out into the Gotham night, which felt more hungry and alive than ever. He texted back: Handled. Your tool’s still sharp. He paused, then added, Batman was here.
The reply came instantly: Come home.
Reese pushed off the wall, the open wound on his neck pulsing with every heartbeat. It wasn’t a request. It was a summoning. The fire awaited, and he was running straight for it, the smell of gasoline and blood clinging to his skin like a promise.