Chapter 56: Take a little walk to the edge of town
The elevator descent was a silent, blood-soaked confessional.
Logan leaned heavily into Roman’s side, every jolt of the car sending a fresh spike of fire up his leg. Roman’s arm around his waist was iron, holding him upright, the pressure aggravating his own shoulder wound. Neither acknowledged the pain. The only sound was their ragged breathing and the soft ding as they passed each floor.
“You’re getting blood on a thirty-thousand-dollar rug,” Logan gritted out, staring at the smeared trail they’d left from the kitchen to the elevator.
“I’ll buy another,” Roman said, his voice devoid of its usual silken quality, stripped down to raw gravel.
The garage was a cathedral of concrete and cold, damp air. The usual fleet of black sedans sat under fluorescent lights that hummed a sickly tune. Two of Roman’s men were supposed to be stationed at the reinforced service entrance. They were there. Slumped against the wall like discarded laundry, dark pools haloing their heads.
Roman stopped. His grip on Logan tightened, knuckles white against Logan’s shirt.
The service door hissed open. Viktor stood there, a pistol held low at his side, his eyes taking in the scene: the two wounded men, the dead guards, the silence. He gave a single, curt nod. “The perimeter is clear. They entered through the maintenance tunnels. A professional team. Not Cobblepot’s.”
Roman didn’t seem to hear him. His gaze was fixed on the dead guards. “Leon. Joseph.” He said the names quietly, almost fondly. Then his head turned, slowly, toward Viktor. The rage that had been boiling under the surface in the penthouse erupted, vast and silent and cold.
“You vet these men.” The words weren’t shouted. They were carved from ice. “You assure me of their loyalty. You tell me this building is a fortress.” He took a limping step forward, dragging Logan with him, his focus entirely on Viktor. “And I find corpses at my door. I find filth in my kitchen. I find him shot.” He jerked his head toward Logan, the motion savage. “Explain to me how your competence has turned to fucking vapor.”
Viktor didn’t flinch. He absorbed the verbal lashing like a stone absorbing rain. “The vetting was sound. They were compromised after. Payments to families, threats. The method is known. I will find the leak.”
“You will find nothing!” Roman’s voice finally cracked, a whip of sound in the vast garage. “Because the men who knew anything are dead! This is a system failure. Your system.”
Logan could feel the tremble of pure, unadulterated fury running through Roman’s body. It was more unnerving than the shooting. He tightened his own arm around Roman’s back, a clumsy gesture of anchorage. “Hey. Sionis. The lecture can wait. We’re standing in a target-rich environment. We need to be somewhere else. Now.”
Roman’s gray eyes flicked to him, the murderous intent shifting focus for a fractured second.
Viktor seized the opening. “The car is ready. I have a location.”
“Where.” It wasn’t a question.
“The house. It is secure. Off-grid. No one knows of it.”
A complex, dark emotion passed over Roman’s face—revulsion, nostalgia, grim acceptance. He gave a sharp, single nod.
The journey was a blur of pain and tense silence. Viktor drove, his eyes constantly checking mirrors. Logan was shoved into the back seat, his leg propped awkwardly. Roman slid in beside him, ripped open the luxury sedan’s first-aid kit, and went to work on his own shoulder with brutal, clinical efficiency, packing the wound with clotting gauze and securing it with tape. He didn’t offer to help Logan.
Gotham’s jagged skyline melted into a river of wet asphalt and skeletal trees. The mansions beyond the city limits were set back from the road, hidden behind high walls and ancient gates. Viktor turned onto a winding, overgrown driveway. Iron gates, ornate and black with rust, loomed ahead. They didn’t open automatically. Viktor got out, used a physical key on a heavy padlock, and pushed them open with a screech of protest.
The house wasn’t welcoming. It was a monument. A hulking Georgian-style structure of pale stone, its windows dark, its grounds shrouded in mist and untended yew hedges. It didn’t look lived in. It looked preserved.
Viktor pulled around to a back entrance. As he killed the engine, a phone buzzed. Viktor pulled his own device from his coat, glanced at the screen. A text from Maya: Status?
Before he could type a reply, another buzz. Viktor? Are they okay?
A third. Just tell me if he’s alive.
Roman’s hand shot between the front seats, snatched the phone from Viktor’s grip. He read the screen, his expression glacial. Without a word, he rolled down his window and flung the phone out into the thick, damp shrubs flanking the driveway. The quiet crunch of its demise was the only answer Maya would get.
“No connections,” Roman said, his voice flat. “Not even through you. Not now.” He pushed his door open and stepped out into the chilling mist.
The inside of the house smelled of dust, disuse, and lemon-scented polish. It was a museum to a grim childhood. Dark wood paneling, portraits of severe-looking men with Roman’s cold gray eyes, shelves of untouched leather-bound books. It was immaculate, as if a staff came daily to clean a place no one ever visited.
Viktor led them to a library. “Generator is on. Water is hot. The medical supplies here are basic, but sterile.” He placed a large metal case on a mahogany desk. “I will sweep the perimeter. Establish a rotation.”
He left, closing the heavy double doors behind him.
Silence descended, thicker than the dust.
Logan hobbled to a worn leather armchair and collapsed into it, hissing through his teeth. The adrenaline was fully gone now, leaving a deep, throbbing agony in his leg. He looked at Roman, who stood in the center of the Persian rug, staring at the cold, empty fireplace.
“So this is Casa de Sionis,” Logan said, pulling at the torn leg of his jeans to get a better look at the wound. It was ugly, but clean. “Cheery.”
Roman didn’t answer. He was statue-still, but his breath was coming in controlled, measured pulls, as if he was holding back a hurricane by force of will alone.
“You know,” Logan continued, his words slightly slurred from pain, “for a guy who just got his palace stormed, you’re weirdly pissed about the help showing up. Most people say thanks when someone takes a bullet for them. Just a tip.”
That did it.
Roman moved. He crossed the room in three swift strides, his hand clamping around the back of the leather chair, caging Logan in. He leaned down, his face inches away, the scent of blood and bourbon and rage pouring off him. “I do not require your protection. I do not want it. Your value is not in your flesh. It is in your mind. Your tongue. Your insolence. Throwing yourself in front of a gun is a waste of the only things about you that are not replaceable.”
Logan stared up at him, too tired and in too much pain to be properly afraid. “He was aiming at your spine. Would’ve punched right through that fancy ego of yours.”
“Then let it!” Roman’s shout echoed off the high ceiling. He slammed a fist against the chair back, making the whole frame shudder. “Do you understand? My death is a calculated risk. Yours is an unacceptable variable. You do not get to make that choice for me. You do not get to decide your life is currency to spend on my problems. I own that decision. I own you. And I decide what parts of you get damaged.”
The words hung in the air, brutal and undeniable.
Logan’s green-hazel eyes hardened. The fear of vulnerability was a old, familiar beast, and Roman had just poked it with a stick. “I’m not a fucking asset in your portfolio, Roman. I’m a person. I see a gun, I react. Sue me.”
“You are both,” Roman snarled, his composure in tatters. “You are the most infuriating, chaotic, valuable thing I have ever possessed. And you will stop acting like a disposable soldier. You will preserve yourself. That is an order.”
“Or what? You’ll kill me?” Logan barked a laugh that hurt his ribs. “Bit counterproductive, don’t you think?”
Roman’s hand came up, not to strike, but to grasp Logan’s chin, forcing his head back. The touch was proprietary, desperate. “No. I will find the thing you care about most—that brittle, hidden piece of you that isn’t covered in sarcasm and cheap jewelry—and I will hold a lighter to it until you learn to stay behind me where you belong.”
It was the most honest thing he’d ever said to him. A confession wrapped in a threat.
The library door opened. Viktor stepped in, his expression unchanged, as if he’d heard nothing. “Perimeter is secure. The team was a ghost crew. No identifiers. The weapons are Eastern European, black market. The style was professional, but not military. Corporate.”
Roman released Logan, turning the full force of his attention to Viktor. The mask of the crime lord slid back into place, the personal fury channeled into a cold, analytical focus. “Corporate. Not Maroni. Not Cobblepot.”
“No,” Viktor agreed. “This was a purchase. A high-value termination order on you, placed by someone with capital who wanted no trace back to themselves. The leak in our security gave them the blueprint. The crew executed it.”
Roman walked to the desk, leaning on it with his good arm. He looked out the tall, leaded-glass window into the slow sunrise of the overgrown garden. “A rival who prefers a clean ledger. Someone who sees the shift in power and wants to cut the head off before the body turns. Not a gangster. A businessman.”
“The contract would be enormous,” Viktor said.
“And the information on my residence even more so.” Roman’s voice was quiet now, plotting. “You will not find the leak, Viktor. You will find the buyer. Follow the money. It will be hidden behind layers of shell companies and offshore accounts. Tear the layers off.”
“It will take time.”
“You have until the bleeding stops,” Roman said, glancing at the red stain soaking through the gauze on his shoulder. “Then we respond.”
Viktor nodded and left again.
The silence this time was different, charged with the aftermath of their clash. Logan rummaged in the medical case on the desk, finding a packet of antiseptic wipes. He tore it open with his teeth and started cleaning the blood from his leg, his movements stiff.
Roman watched him from across the room. “You need stitches.”
“I’ll manage.”
“Don’t be petulant.” Roman walked over, took the suture kit from the case, and pulled a chair over, sitting in front of Logan. It was a command, not an offer.
Logan exhaled, extending his leg. Roman worked in silence, his hands steady and precise, the needle pulling the skin closed. The intimacy of it was more violent than the shooting had been.
“Who would want to buy a hit on you that badly?” Logan asked, his voice tight as the needle pinched.
“Every mayor for the last decade. Two district attorneys. The CEO of Janus Cosmetics. A theater critic from the Gotham Times. The list is long.” Roman tied off a knot. “But this feels different. This feels like a first move, not a last resort. Someone is making space for themselves.”
He finished the last stitch, clipped the thread. His hand rested for a moment on Logan’s calf, just above the wound. A touch that could be read as clinical or possessive. Maybe both.
Outside, the mansion’ grounds were swallowed by the deep violet of night, the windows reflecting only the dark, empty room behind them. They were in a gilded cage, waiting. The city’s glow was a distant smear on the horizon, a world away.
Logan looked at the man bent over his leg, at the ruthless concentration on his face, at the blood that belonged to both of them now, staining the pristine carpet of his father’s house.
The attack hadn’t been a battle. It was a message. And as the cold, dead air of the Sionis mansion settled into his bones, Logan understood the response wouldn’t be a reply.
It would be an eradication. And he was now, irrevocably, in the heart of it.
And he was now, irrevocably, in the heart of it.
Dawn broke over Gotham not with color, but with a gradual lightening of the gray. In the clinic, Maya washed the last of the blood from under her nails until her skin felt raw. The men left behind to heal—a man with a bandaged chest, another with his arm in a sling—watched her with wary, animal silence.
“Anything?” she asked the room, her voice hollow. “Any chatter about what happened last night? At the tower?”
The man with the sling shook his head slowly. “We drive trucks. We unload boxes. They don’t tell us the weather, lady.” The other just stared at the wall. They were gears, useful and uninformed. They knew less than Viktor, who knew enough to disappear.
She pulled her personal phone out, staring at the screen. Three texts to Viktor, delivered but unopened. A vast, silent void where answers should have been. She put the phone down on the steel table. It was just a plastic rectangle. It told her nothing.
In the cold library, the dust motes swam in thin bars of morning light. Logan’s leg was a tight, hot knot of pain. Roman stood at the window, his silhouette rigid against the pale glow, the blood on his shirt a stiff, brown map of the night’s failures.
“You need water,” Logan said, pushing himself up from the chair. “Or whiskey. Preferably whiskey. I’ll get it.”
He’d barely taken two limping steps before Roman was on him. A hand clamped onto his bicep, spinning him with shocking force. Logan’s bad leg buckled. Roman caught him, not gently, and shoved him back into the leather chair, which groaned in protest.
“Sit. Down.” Each word was a chisel strike. “You do not fetch. You do not move. You exist in that chair and you heal. Is that a complex directive?”
Logan caught his breath, glaring up. Roman’s face was all sharp angles and fury, but the skin around his eyes was tight with a pain he’d never admit. “You’re bleeding through your bandage again. You’re pacing like a caged tiger. You’re going to pass out on the priceless rug and I’ll have to drag you. Let me help.”
“Your help is what created this tableau,” Roman seethed, but he didn’t move away. He loomed over the chair, pinning Logan with his gaze. “We will find the money. We will follow it to a name. And when we have the name, I will take the Black Mask and I will visit them. I will carve the cost of this night into their skin. I will melt their fortune and pour it down their throat. I will make an example that ends this conversation for a generation.”
It was a rant, a dark, intricate fantasy of revenge. Logan listened, his head tilted back against the leather. He saw the crack in the armor, the frantic energy that masked sheer exhaustion.
“Sounds efficient,” Logan said, his voice calm, almost conversational. “A little showy, but I get the branding. You’ll need your strength for all that melting and pouring, though. Hard to be terrifying if you’re swaying on your feet from blood loss.”
Roman’s eyes narrowed. “Do not patronize me.”
“I’m agreeing with you. Total annihilation. Great plan. My leg’s already on board.” Logan shifted, wincing. “But even a siege weapon needs to resupply. Sit. For five minutes. Plot your genocide from a comfortable position. I won’t tell anyone you took a break.”
He reached out, his fingers brushing lightly over the back of Roman’s hand where it gripped the chair. It wasn’t a grab. It was a feather-touch, there and gone. “Unless you’re worried I’ll try something while you’re resting. Which, given my current mobility, would be a sad and pathetic attempt. You could probably stop me with a stern look.”
A muscle twitched in Roman’s jaw. The violent tension in his frame wavered, just for a second, confronted not by defiance but by this unsettling, pragmatic care. He looked from Logan’s face to the touch on his hand, as if it were a code he couldn’t crack.
He released a breath that was almost a shudder. Slowly, deliberately, he sat on the wide arm of Logan’s chair, his body a line of heat against Logan’s shoulder. He didn’t relax. He perched, a hawk momentarily alighting.
“Five minutes,” Roman conceded, the words gritted out. He stared straight ahead at the dead fireplace, his profile cut from stone. “Then we begin.”
The silence in the library was a taut wire, humming with unsaid things. Roman’s body, perched on the chair arm, was a sculpture of withheld violence. Logan watched the slow, deliberate curl of Roman’s fingers into a fist, the white knuckles, the fresh bloom of crimson seeping through the makeshift bandage on his shoulder. He could feel the tremble of exhausted adrenaline through the leather.
Logan lifted his hand and placed it between Roman’s shoulder blades. He didn’t say a word. He just rubbed slow, firm circles over the stiff wool of Roman’s ruined suit jacket. He felt the incredible tension there, the corded muscle locked in a permanent snarl. Roman didn’t acknowledge the touch, but he didn’t pull away. His breathing was the only sound, a measured in and out that seemed to cost him something.
In the clinic, Maya’s own silence was shattered by the tinny bleat of a radio left on a shelf. A talk station, droning about traffic. The segment ended. A jingle played. “And we interrupt for this breaking news from the Channel 8 desk,” a smooth, artificial voice announced. Maya froze, a bottle of antiseptic in her hand. “Gotham City Councilman Roman Sionis was reportedly the target of a violent attack early this morning at his luxury high-rise residence. Sources say it appears to be a coordinated gang hit. Police have cordoned off the block. The condition of Councilman Sionis is unknown at this time. We’ll have more updates as they…”
The voice became static. Maya’s fingers had twisted the dial, shutting it off. The plastic bottle cracked in her grip, solution dripping onto her boots. Councilman Sionis. Gang attack. Condition unknown. The words were clean, simple, and utterly hollow. They explained the dead phone, the silence, the scale of the medical resupply. They explained nothing at all.
At the mansion, the five minutes had bled into ten. The light through the windows grew stronger, etching the dust in sharper relief. Roman’s fist remained clenched, the bloodstain on his shoulder inching wider, a dark petal unfurling. Logan’s thumb traced the hard ridge of his spine.
Just as Roman inhaled, tensing his body to stand and shatter the fragile stillness, Logan moved.
His hand slid from Roman’s back and closed over Roman’s left fist. He didn’t pull. He just held it, grounding the tension. “Hey.” His voice was low, stripped of its usual snark. Roman’s head turned slightly, a sliver of cold gray eye visible. Logan gestured clumsily at his own bandaged leg with his free hand. “I need a favor. This whole standing thing is a bitch. Help me to the shower. This library smells like failure and old rich people. I want it off me.”
He watched the calculation in Roman’s eyes: the refusal, the irritation, the recognition of a plausible exit from this emotional stalemate. “You are incapable of simple hygiene without supervision?” Roman muttered, but he unfolded himself from the chair arm.
He stood, then offered his good arm. Logan took it, hauling himself up with a grunt, his weight heavily on Roman’s right side. They moved through the lifeless house like a pair of damaged ghosts, their footsteps muffled by runners no one ever walked on. Logan led them, not to a guest bathroom, but toward the master wing, pushing open a heavy oak door.
The bathroom was a mausoleum of black marble and gold fixtures. It was cold. Logan reached in and turned on the shower, steam beginning to billow and fog the mirrors. He kept his grip on Roman’s arm, not for support now, but as an anchor.
“Come on,” Logan said, his voice softening, losing its edge. It wasn’t a challenge. It was an invitation.
He turned Roman gently to face him, their bodies close in the steam-filled space. Logan’s hands went to the buttons of Roman’s blood-crusted shirt. His fingers worked slowly, carefully, peeling the stiff fabric away from the wound on his shoulder. He pushed the shirt off Roman’s good arm, then let it fall from the injured one with a touch so light it was barely there. The ruined garment pooled on the floor.
Roman stood, allowing it, his expression unreadable. Logan’s hands then went to his own belt, his own stained jeans, his movements deliberate and unashamed. He stepped under the hot spray, hissing as water hit his stitched leg, and reached back out through the curtain of steam.
He took Roman’s left hand again and guided him into the shower, under the punishing, hot water. Roman flinched instinctively as it hit his shoulder, but Logan was already there, turning him so the spray hit his back first. Logan took a bar of plain, unscented soap and began to wash the blood and sweat and gunpowder residue from Roman’s skin.
His touch was methodical, tracing the lines of Roman’s back, his arms, avoiding the angry wound. He worked the soap into a lather, his hands moving in slow, soothing circles over knotted muscle, rinsing away the violence of the night. The water ran pink, then clear at their feet. Logan’s own movements were careful, favoring his leg, but his focus was entirely on the man in front of him.
He turned Roman gently again to face him. With a clean washcloth, he carefully cleaned the unmarked skin of Roman’s chest, his neck, his jaw. He washed his own chest, his arms, letting the water cascade over them both. It was an act of profound, quiet reclamation. There was no urgency, no demand. Only the steam, the heat, the slow, seductive erasure of the outside world and its knives.
Logan’s eyes lifted to meet Roman’s. The cold gray was still there, but the fury had banked, replaced by a deep, exhausted scrutiny. Logan leaned in, his forehead almost touching Roman’s, the water sluicing between them. His hand came up, fingers brushing the wet hair at Roman’s temple, not restraining, just touching.