Chapter 44: The Interview
The journalist’s name was Cora Vance. She sat perched on the edge of a velvet armchair in Roman’s study, a slim digital recorder placed with deliberate care on the desk between them. She had the careful, assessing eyes of a predator who’d learned to wear a sweater set. The profile was for the Gotham Gazette’s weekend magazine: “Philanthropy with a Purpose: The Redeployment of Roman Sionis.”
Logan hated her immediately.
He hated the way her gaze flicked over him, cataloging him as part of the décor—the attractive, silent accessory beside the powerful man. He was playing his part, positioned slightly behind Roman’s chair, a living testament to Roman’s “generous mentorship.” He wore a charcoal sweater that felt like a surrender, soft against skin that still remembered the weave of diner aprons.
“So, Mr. Sionis,” Cora began, her voice a pleasant, professional instrument. “Your ‘Gotham Resilient’ fund has poured millions into infrastructure in the Coventry district. Critics call it… reputation laundering. Given the history of Sionis Industries in that very neighborhood, how do you respond?”
Roman smiled. It was a thin, practiced curve of the lips that never touched his eyes. “History is a teacher, Ms. Vance. Not a warden. We learn. We improve. The families living in those refurbished brownstones, the children in the new community center… they aren’t concerned with editorial board semantics. They’re concerned with heat in winter and safe parks. We provide that.”
He spoke smoothly, weaving a tapestry of civic duty and regretful corporate pasts. Logan listened, his face a mask of attentive agreement. His lungs felt clear. His hands were steady. The schedule, the control, the terrible peace of it—it was working. He was a well-maintained instrument.
Cora’s eyes slid to him. “And Logan. You’ve benefited directly from Mr. Sionis’s personal investment. A remarkable career pivot. How has his guidance shaped your… perspective?”
It was a landmine, gently offered. Logan felt Roman’s attention like a physical weight behind him. He leaned forward, just enough, offering a smile that used to work on tipsy customers at the diner. It felt stiff on his face now.
“Perspective is everything,” Logan said, his voice quieter than he intended. He cleared his throat. “Before, I was just… reacting. To bills, to bad shifts, to whatever crisis was next. Roman showed me how to build something. Stability. A future. It’s not about forgetting where you came from. It’s about having the resources to finally look forward.” The words tasted like ash, but they were the right words. He saw Roman’s subtle nod in his periphery.
“A future that includes, what, real estate?” Cora pressed, a faux-casual tilt to her head.
“A future that includes choice,” Logan corrected, the sharpness slipping through before he could cage it. He softened it with another smile. “Something a lot of people don’t get.”
Cora held his gaze for a beat too long. She saw something. The exhaustion under the polish, maybe. The ghost of the line cook in the expensive sweater. She smiled back, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Choice. A powerful word.”
The interview wound on. Logan gave more answers, each one a polished stone from the riverbed of his new life. He spoke of scholarship funds, of opportunity, of Roman’s demanding standards being a form of respect. He was eloquent. He was convincing. He wanted to vomit.
When Cora finally clicked off her recorder and stood, exchanging pleasantries, Logan felt a deep, cellular fatigue. It was worse than the coughing. It was the fatigue of holding a shape that wasn’t his.
The heavy study door clicked shut behind her. The silence she left was thick, charged.
Roman didn’t move for a long moment. Then he swiveled his chair, looking up at Logan. The public mask was gone, stripped away to reveal the raw, calculating appreciation beneath. “You were exceptional,” he said, the words a soft caress. “The line about choice. That was inspired. It had the perfect blend of humility and defiance. She believed you wanted it.”
Logan’s breath escaped in a shaky rush he hadn’t known he was holding. The praise was a drug, hot and immediate, flooding the hollow spaces the performance had carved out. He slumped, the performative tension draining from his shoulders.
“I just told her what she wanted to hear,” he muttered, looking away.
“You told her a truth,” Roman corrected. He stood, closing the distance between them. His fingers lifted Logan’s chin, forcing eye contact. “Your truth. That you were adrift. That I provided anchor. That you are… grateful.” His thumb traced Logan’s lower lip. “Aren’t you?”
The question hung in the air, alongside the scent of decaying orchid and old whiskey. Logan’s defiance, his smart mouth, it was all just… gone. Burned up in the effort of the performance. All that was left was a terrible, yearning need for the certainty Roman offered. For the praise. For the end of the struggle.
“Yes,” Logan whispered. The word was a fracture.
Roman’s mouth found his, a reward and a seal. Logan melted into it, his hands fisting in the fine wool of Roman’s jacket, clinging. He was gasping when they broke apart, but not from a cough. From the sheer relief of being known, and being approved of.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Insistent. Once. Twice.
Roman’s gaze dipped to the sound, then back to Logan’s face. A silent question.
Logan pulled the phone out. Maya’s name glowed on the screen.
Saw the press release about the interview. ‘Rising star’ huh? You doing okay in that zoo? Remember you hate zoos.
A month ago, it would have made him laugh. Now, it felt like an artifact from a distant, childish planet. The concern behind it, the persistent, gentle checking-in, it didn’t feel like care. It felt like pity. It felt like she was staring through the gilded cage and feeling sorry for the bird, and he was tired of being looked at with sadness.
He showed the screen to Roman. A test. A loyalty offering.
Roman glanced at it, his expression dismissive. “The herbalist persists. Her sentimentality is a weak brand of poison. It undermines your progress by suggesting this,” he gestured between them, at the study, at Logan’s very being, “is anything less than what you’ve earned.”
Logan stared at the text. Maya’s unchanging kindness. It was undermining. It was a voice saying this is wrong, and he was so tired of wrong and right. He was tired of fighting. Roman’s world was simple. Demanding, brutal, but simple. You performed. You were rewarded. You were protected. You belonged.
The alternative was coughing blood alone in an alley, or drowning in the watery sympathy of people who could never understand the cost of a clean, quiet breath.
He typed a reply, his thumbs moving with a cold finality.
I’m fine. Really. Work is good. Roman’s good. You don’t have to keep checking on me. It’s kind of annoying.
He hit send before he could think. The vibration of the sent message felt like a door sliding shut.
Roman watched him, a faint, approving smile on his lips. He took the phone from Logan’s hand and placed it face down on the desk, next to the wilting orchid. “Clear boundaries are a form of self-respect,” he said. His hand returned to Logan’s cheek. “You’re learning.”
Logan leaned into the touch, closing his eyes. He could imagine Maya’s face reading that text. The hurt. The confusion. The eventual, resigned acceptance. It caused a faint pang, a ghost of an ache, but it was buried under a much heavier, more immediate sensation: relief.
He was so tired of being her project. Her pity case. Let her have her plants and her moral high ground. He had something real. Something that didn’t flinch at blood or demand explanations. Something that wanted him whole, even if the process of getting there meant being broken down first.
“I am,” Logan said, opening his eyes to meet Roman’s unblinking gray gaze. He wasn’t sure what he was agreeing to anymore, and the not-knowing was the most peaceful thing he’d ever felt.
Across the city, in her clinic, Maya stared at her phone screen. The words It’s kind of annoying stared back, blunt and cruel.
She didn’t cry. She set the phone down very carefully. She looked at the empty space on her shelf where the tinctures had been. She thought of Ivy’s message. Starve the soil.
Her face hardened. The sympathy, the patience, the gentle check-ins—that was over. Logan had chosen his side. He’d called her care a nuisance. Fine.
She wasn’t just fighting for him anymore. She was fighting against what had taken him. The soil wasn’t just money and permits. It was the very atmosphere people like Roman created, an atmosphere where gratitude felt like victory and love felt like surrender.
She picked up her phone again, her movements precise. She opened the encrypted app and typed a new message.
The subject is fully acclimated. No further outreach from my end.
The reply was instantaneous this time, a single word glowing on her screen: Tonight.
Maya didn’t pack a bag. She just locked the clinic door, flipped the sign to closed, and drove east until the city lights faded in her rearview. The air changed, growing dense and damp, the scent of petrichor and deep earth bleeding through her car vents. The old greenhouse loomed at the end of a weed-choked lane, its glass panes reflecting the bruised twilight.
Ivy was waiting inside, not among the vibrant, therapeutic herbs of Maya’s memory, but in a newer, secluded section. Here, the plants were darker, thicker, with veins that pulsed a faint, phosphorescent green under mauve leaves. The air tasted metallic.
“He told you to stop,” Ivy stated, her back to Maya as she trimmed a thorned vine with a surgical blade.
“He said I was annoying,” Maya corrected, her voice flat. She didn’t flinch at the strange flora. She stepped closer. “The ‘Rising Star’ profile runs tomorrow. He’s the shiny new prop in Sionis’s philanthropy showcase.”
Ivy turned, her moss-green eyes appraising. The pity Maya once feared seeing there was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating focus. “And?”
“And I’m done asking nicely,” Maya said, the words firm, final. “You said starve the soil. Tell me how. Really how. I don’t care about the methods anymore.” She met Ivy’s gaze, letting her own anger and grief show, raw and unvarnished. “What do we do?”
A slow, creeping smile touched Ivy’s lips. It wasn’t warm. It was the satisfied expression of a gardener who’d finally seen a stubborn seed break open. “We accelerate the blight,” she said, handing Maya the surgical blade. Its edge gleamed under the purple grow-lights. “Starting with the roots of his money. You’ll need to get your hands dirty.”
Maya took the blade. It was cold, and perfectly balanced. “Good,” she said.
Logan smoothed the silk tie Roman had chosen for him, staring at his reflection in the penthouse’s floor-to-ceiling window. Gotham sprawled below, a circuit board of ambition and failure. He looked the part—the crisp white shirt, the tailored jacket, the man who belonged in the room where the new museum wing was being christened the “Sionis Gallery.”
But he was learning to see behind the curtain.
He watched Roman now, at every function, every handshake meeting. The man’s elegance was a strained cable, vibrating with a contained fury Logan recognized in his own old, flickering defiance. Tonight, at the museum gala, he saw it plainly. A city councilwoman, her smile a gash of lipstick, had cornered Roman, droning about “stakeholder consultations” and “community impact assessments” for the Coventry developments.
“Due process is the bedrock of public trust, Roman,” she simpered, patting his arm.
Roman’s smile was marble. “Of course, Councilwoman. We value every… perspective.” But the muscle in his jaw jumped, a tiny, seismic pulse. Later, a business reporter asked a gentle, idiotic question about “legacy.” Roman’s answer was flawless, generous, and as hollow as a rotted stump. Logan saw his knuckles whiten around his crystal tumbler.
In the limo home, Roman was silent. The air congealed around him, thick with a rage too vast for the plush interior. He stared out at the passing lights, his fingers rhythmically tightening and releasing on his knee.
“They want a lapdog,” Roman finally said, his voice so low it was almost a sub-audible growl. “A pedigreed beast to perform tricks and wear their ribbons. They speak of vision with the vocabulary of committee reports.”
Logan didn’t offer empty solace. He’d learned that, too. Instead, he poured two fingers of whiskey from the car’s decanter and handed one to Roman. “They’re scared of what you actually are,” he said, his own voice quiet, conversational. “So they try to build a box made of paperwork and press releases to put you in. It must be fucking maddening.”
Roman took the glass, his cold gray eyes cutting to Logan. He sipped, the anger simmering, seeking a target. “It is a tedious, grinding entropy. It dissolves purpose into procedure.”
Logan leaned back, swirling his own drink. He felt a strange, calm clarity. He wasn’t the breakable thing in the car anymore. He was the witness, the confidant, the one person in this world who wasn’t afraid of the storm behind Roman’s eyes. “So don’t play their game on their board,” he shrugged. “You spent the evening funding their museum. They got what they wanted. Now you should get what you want.”
Roman watched him, a predator considering new prey. “And what is it you think I want, Logan?”
Logan met his gaze, holding it. “To stop pretending.”
They rode the rest of the way in that charged, understanding silence.
Back in the penthouse, the dam broke. Roman didn’t shout. The violence was precise, surgical. He swept the obsidian ornaments from the entry console. They exploded against the wall in a shower of glossy black shards. He picked up a heavy art book and hurled it through the glass front of a climate-controlled display case, triggering a piercing alarm that he ignored.
Logan didn’t retreat. He stood by the bar, finishing his whiskey, watching the performance of fury. He saw the raw, unfiltered power in it, the terrifying honesty. This was the man who built an empire, not the polished ghost who donated wings to museums.
Roman braced his hands on the ruined console, head bowed, his shoulders tense cords. The silence after the alarm’s blare was deafening.
Logan set his glass down. The click was deliberate. He walked across the room, his steps careful on the glittering wreckage. He stopped behind Roman, close enough to feel the heat radiating from him.
“You know,” Logan said, his voice almost a murmur against the shell of Roman’s ear. “I never really got it before. The whole… power thing.” He reached out, his fingers hovering just above the strained fabric of Roman’s suit jacket, not yet touching. “But seeing you like this? All that control just… gone?”
He let his hand finally settle, a firm pressure on Roman’s back. He felt the immense tension coiled there.
“It’s the hottest fucking thing I’ve ever seen,” Logan breathed, the words bald and hungry. “So don’t stop on my account. Do what you need to do. Let it out.”
Roman went utterly still. The only sound was the faint, irregular drip of whiskey from the shattered decanter onto the floor. Then, slowly, he turned.
His eyes were not just cold now. They were incandescent with a focused, homicidal rage that had found a new and infinitely more interesting target. The aristocratic mask was gone, stripped away to reveal something primal and gleaming beneath. He looked at Logan as if seeing him for the first time.
Logan felt a jolt of pure, undiluted adrenaline. It was cleaner than fear. It was recognition.
A genuine smile broke across Logan’s face, unbidden and bright. It wasn’t a performance. It was the thrill of a gambler who’d just gone all-in on a hunch and watched the dealer flinch. He’d called the storm to him, and now it was here.
Roman closed the distance in one fluid stride. His hand shot out, not to strike, but to seize the back of Logan’s neck. The grip was vise-tight, possessive, promising bruises. He pulled Logan in until their foreheads nearly touched, his breath hot and sharp with fury and expensive scotch.
“You think this is a game?” Roman’s voice was a silk-wrapped razor, low and dangerous.
“I think it’s the only thing that isn’t,” Logan breathed, his smile softening into something more intimate. He didn’t struggle. He yielded into the grip, his body going pliant. He lifted his own hands, sliding them slowly up the ruin of Roman’s suit jacket, feeling the tense power beneath the fabric.
He traced the line of Roman’s jaw with his thumb, a seductive counterpoint to the violence of the hold on his neck. “All that pretending you hate,” Logan murmured, his gaze dropping to Roman’s mouth. “You don’t have to pretend with me. I see what you are. I’m not asking you to be anything else.”
Roman’s other hand came up, gripping Logan’s hip hard enough to grind bone. He searched Logan’s face, looking for the lie, the fear, the artifice. He found only open defiance and a shocking, welcoming hunger.
A low sound escaped Roman, part growl, part surrender. He crushed his mouth against Logan’s in a kiss that was all teeth and claiming pressure. It was nothing like the calculated rewards from before. This was consumption.
Logan kissed him back with equal fervor, all clever words dissolving into pure sensation. He tangled his fingers in Roman’s hair, mussing the perfect slickness, pulling him closer. He met the frantic, angry energy not with resistance, but with a guided acceptance, turning the fury into a different kind of heat.
When Roman broke the kiss, he was breathing hard. His eyes were still dark, but the chaos in them had channeled into a single, intense beam of desire. He looked at Logan’s swollen lips, the flush on his throat, the genuine, unchallenged acceptance in his hazel-green eyes.
“Mine,” Roman stated, the word leaving no room for heaven or argument.
“Yours,” Logan echoed, the agreement a velvet whisper. He leaned in, brushing his lips against the corner of Roman’s mouth. “So take charge. I’m not going anywhere.”
Roman’s grip on his neck didn’t loosen; it became an anchor. He used it to steer Logan backward, not toward the bedroom with its clinical order, but across the main living space toward the vast, cold expanse of the panoramic window. Gotham’s skyline glittered below, a indifferent witness.
“You want to see what I am?” Roman’s voice was a scrape against the silence. “Then look.” He pushed Logan against the chilled glass, the city lights painting them both in sterile neon. “See all that? It’s built on swallowing pretty, fragile things like you whole.”
Logan’s breath fogged the window. The pressure was immense, a claim that bordered on pain. He leaned into it, turning his head just enough to catch Roman’s reflection in the dark glass. “I’m not fragile,” he said, the words vibrating against the pane. “I’m still here.”
That was the only provocation needed. Roman’s hands were on him then, not with lover’s patience but with a conqueror’s efficiency. Fabric tore. Buttons pinged against the floor and were lost in the rubble of the shattered display case. The expensive sweater, the tailored trousers—all of it was treated as mere packaging, ripped away to reveal what was beneath.
Logan let it happen. He arched into the rough hands, a shiver that was part chill from the glass and part pure, electric anticipation. He didn’t help, but he didn’t resist. His surrender was an active, breathing thing.
When Roman spun him around, his back met the unforgiving window. The view was dizzying, a sheer drop mirrored in the abyss in Roman’s eyes. There was no tenderness, no preamble. Roman’s mouth was on his again, a punishing kiss that tasted of dominance and expensive scotch. Logan opened for it, for him, his hands coming up to frame Roman’s face. His thumbs swept over the high, sharp cheekbones, a soft, rhythmic stroke against the hard line of Roman’s jaw.
“There you are,” Logan breathed against his lips, the words barely audible. His touch was a deliberate contrast, a gentle teasing counterpoint to the bruising force. He traced the shell of Roman’s ear, his fingers carding through the perfectly styled hair now in disarray. “All that noise for a bunch of bureaucrats. What a waste.”
Roman snarled, biting at Logan’s lower lip before shoving a thigh between his legs, pressing him harder against the glass. He fumbled with his own clothes, his movements uncharacteristically frantic. The usual calculated control was gone, burned away by a need for consummation that was as much about obliteration as possession.
Logan watched him, his own breath coming fast. He reached down, his hands meeting Roman’s, not to stop him but to help. His fingers, deft from a thousand shifts at the diner grill, made quick work of the remaining barriers. “Let me,” he murmured, his voice a low, steady hum in the storm. He wasn’t being seductive. He was being practical. Efficient. It was the most intimate thing he could have done.
The first thrust was a shock of pure, brutal sensation. Logan’s head knocked back against the glass with a dull thud. A sharp gasp was punched from his lungs, but he didn’t cry out. He wrapped his legs around Roman’s hips, anchoring them both, pulling him deeper. He took the punishing rhythm, the raw, unfiltered force of it, and let it unravel him.
This was the truth they never spoke. The beautiful, terrible simplicity of it. No more performances. No more schedules or journalists or pitying texts. Just this: the strain of muscle, the slick heat between them, the animal truth of being claimed.
Roman’s face was buried in the crook of Logan’s neck, his breaths ragged gusts against his skin. Every deep, driving motion was an affirmation, a physical etching of his earlier words. Mine.
Logan embraced it. He let the control he’d clung to all his life—over his poverty, his illness, his fate—slip away completely. It was a freefall, and Roman was the only solid thing in the void. He clutched at Roman’s shoulders, his blunt nails digging into the fine fabric of his ruined shirt, but his other hand drifted up again. It found the tense, corded line of Roman’s neck.
He soothed the raging pulse there with the pad of his thumb. He whispered nonsense into the sweat-damp hair at Roman’s temple—not sweet nothings, but gritty, real fragments. “That’s it… see? No one else gets this… just this…”
He was being split apart on the blade of Roman’s need, and he’d never felt more whole. Every rough, possessive snap of Roman’s hips was an answer to a question Logan had been too afraid to ask. This was where he belonged. In the eye of the hurricane. Not safe from the storm, but in it, essential to its fury.
Roman’s rhythm fractured, becoming desperate, final. A guttural sound was torn from his throat, a raw, unfiltered thing that had nothing to do with the man in the tailored suits. He shuddered, his entire body locking as he spilled himself deep inside Logan, a final, violent brand of ownership.
Logan followed him over the edge a moment later, his own release a silent, seizing wave that left him blind and breathless. It was less a pleasure than a capitulation, his body yielding up the last of its resistance in a white-hot rush.
For a long minute, there was only the sound of their ragged breathing fogging the glass, the distant hum of the city far below. Roman’s weight was heavy against him, pinning him to the window. Logan didn’t push him away. He kept his hands moving, slow and languid now, tracing the sweat-slicked lines of Roman’s back through the torn shirt. He pressed a soft, dry kiss to Roman’s temple.
“Feel better?” Logan whispered, the ghost of his old smirk in his voice, though it was softened by exhaustion and something dangerously close to affection.
Roman didn’t answer with words. He simply lifted his head. The cold, aristocratic mask was still absent. In its place was a look of sated, profound focus, his gray eyes clear and utterly present. He looked at Logan—really looked—at the mess he’d made of him, against the backdrop of the empire he’d built.
He leaned in and kissed him again. This one was different. Slower. A seal.
When he finally pulled back, he didn’t retreat. He rested his forehead against Logan’s, his breath mingling with his. The city’s light painted his face in shades of blue and white.
“Yes,” Roman said, the single word definitive. He didn’t move to disentangle them. He stayed, holding Logan against the glass, in the wreckage of the room, in the silent aftermath of the storm they’d made together.