Chapter 15: Live From the Meltdown
The foyer felt different after the screaming stopped. The marble floor, which had echoed with Emily’s raw-throated shrieks and the crash of terracotta, now just reflected the uneasy quiet of three people trying to remember how to breathe. The broken fern lay spilling dark soil like a wound, the scent of damp earth and crushed greenery cutting through the sterile, cologne-tinged air.
Gina Shaw had ended the live stream with the professional cool of a surgeon closing an incision. “We’ll have analysis and context after these messages,” she’d said, her face a mask of grave concern that didn’t quite hide the triumphant gleam in her eyes. The camera phone was now lowered, but its presence still hovered, a phantom limb.
Juliet was silent, pressed against Cylene’s leg, her small body rigid. She hadn’t cried. She’d watched, her green eyes huge, as her father drove his shoulder into the red-haired woman—the woman from the whispered arguments, the woman who made her mother’s face go tight and still—and sent her sprawling into the pottery.
Pedro stood between them and the door, his chest heaving. The two uniformed security officers, looking profoundly uncomfortable, had Emily by the elbows. Her earlier, performative sobs had hardened into a silent, terrifying rage. She didn’t struggle. She just stared at Cylene over the officer’s shoulder, her mascara-blacked eyes pits of pure hatred. A shred of fern leaf clung to her scarlet hair.
“You’re finished,” Emily said, her voice a low, shredded thing. “You have no idea what you’ve started.”
“I started with a restraining order,” Cylene replied, her own voice surprisingly steady. She kept a hand on Juliet’s head. “You finished it by violating it. On a live stream. Give my regards to your lawyer.”
One of the officers cleared his throat. “Mr. Balmaceda, we’ll need a statement. And we’ll be taking her in. The, uh, the digital evidence…” He glanced at Gina’s phone.
“You’ll have it,” Pedro said. He hadn’t taken his eyes off Emily. “Everything.”
As they led her out, Emily threw one last look back, not at Pedro, but at Juliet. It was a look of such venomous calculation that Cylene instinctively turned her daughter’s face into her thigh. The heavy door thudded shut, muffling the sound of the elevator chime.
The silence expanded, dense and prickly.
Gina broke it, the sound of her tapping on her phone screen unnaturally loud. “Well. That was television.” She looked up, her professional composure snapping back into place. “The clip of her launch-and-cry is already at two hundred thousand likes on Twitter. The narrative is… exceptionally clean. Victim fights back, predator melts down. The internet is a simple beast. It loves a simple story.”
“She’s not a predator,” Pedro muttered, running a hand over his face. He looked at the soil smeared on the marble. “She’s a fucking bomb I let into our house.”
“Semantics,” Gina said, stowing her phone. “The public understands bombs. They also understand drunk-dialing and poorly conceived break-ins. My piece goes up in twenty minutes. This…” She gestured at the wreckage of the fern. “This is the perfect visual coda. Can I get a shot of the restraint order paperwork? The one with her name on it?”
Cylene felt a wave of exhaustion so profound it made her bones ache. “On the desk in the study. Blue folder.”
As Gina moved away, drawn to the next piece of evidence, Cylene finally looked down at Juliet. “Hey. You okay, bug?”
Juliet’s lower lip trembled. “Why was she so angry at you?”
The million-dollar question. Cylene knelt, her knees popping, bringing herself to her daughter’s level. She could smell the strawberry shampoo in her hair. “Because I have something she wanted very badly. And I wouldn’t let her have it anymore.”
“Your stories?”
The insight was a knife twist. “Yeah. My stories. And our peace. And your dad’s attention. She wanted all of it.”
“Is she going to jail?” Juliet asked, with the brutal practicality of a child.
“Probably for a little while,” Pedro answered, coming to crouch beside them. He didn’t touch Juliet, just kept his distance, offering his presence. “She broke a lot of rules.”
Juliet considered this. Then she looked at the dirt. “She killed your plant.”
A short, startled laugh burst from Cylene’s chest, half-hysterical. “Yeah. She did.”
“We can get a new one,” Pedro said, his voice soft. “A tougher one.”
Gina reemerged from the study, clutching the blue folder. “Gold. This is all gold. I’m going to file from my car. The lawyers will be calling you within the hour. Fischer’s probably having an aneurysm turned into a zen garden right about now. Stay off social. Don’t answer any numbers you don’t know.” She paused at the door, looking at the three of them huddled on the floor. For a second, her reporter’s mask slipped, revealing something like pity, or maybe just understanding. “It’s out of your hands now. The story’s writing itself. Try to get some sleep. You look like hell.”
Then she was gone, leaving them in the wreckage of their own front hall.
The process that followed was mechanical. Pedro called his lawyer, speaking in low, urgent tones. Cylene made Juliet a bowl of cereal she didn’t eat, then coaxed her into a bath, washing away the invisible grime of the confrontation. The cartoons played to an empty living room.
By the time Juliet was finally asleep, curled in a guest room bed with a stubbornness that refused the master, the sky outside the windows was full dark, the city lights a hard, glittering counterfeit of stars.
Cylene found Pedro in the kitchen, trying to sweep the spilled soil into a dustpan. He was doing a terrible job.
“Leave it,” she said.
He leaned the broom against the island. “I can’t just leave it.”
“You have to. For tonight.” She opened the fridge, not hungry, but needing the cool breath of air on her face. “Your lawyer?”
“Said it’s a ‘best-case scenario from a worst-case situation.’ The assault charge is solid. The violation is irrefutable. With the video, she’ll likely take a deal. No trial.” He sighed, a ragged sound. “He also said the copyright lawsuits are now a slam dunk. Fischer’s team is already drafting the press release reclaiming your authorship. You’ll be reinstated with the Guild.”
Cylene closed the fridge door. The news, the victory she’d fought for for years, landed inside her with a dull thud. It felt abstract, like hearing about something that happened to someone else. All she could see was Juliet’s frozen face, and Emily’s final, targeting glance.
“She looked at Juliet,” Cylene said quietly.
Pedro went still. “I know.”
“Not at you. At her. Like she was… measuring.”
“She was,” he said, his voice grim. “She was measuring the hurt she could still cause. It’s all she has left.” He finally looked at her, his eyes shadowed in the low kitchen light. “It’s over, Cylene. She’s got nothing left to throw. The world saw it.”
“The world saw a viral clip. They didn’t see the last 2 years.” She walked to the window, pressing her forehead against the cool glass. Her reflection stared back, a pale ghost superimposed over the city. “What happens tomorrow? To us?”
He didn’t answer immediately. The hum of the dishwasher filled the silence.
“I don’t know,” he said, and the honesty was more unnerving than any promise. “I know I’m not leaving this apartment tonight while you and Juliet are here. I know I have about six hundred missed calls, half of which are probably from Fischer firing me and the other half from people wanting to hire me because of this. I know I need to find a therapist who specializes in untangling men who are gullible enough to get drugged by sociopaths.” He took a step toward her, then stopped. “And I know that today, when she came at you, I didn’t think. I just moved. And it felt like the first right, instinctive thing I’ve done in a decade.”
Cylene watched his reflection approach hers in the dark window. Their ghosts merged against the skyline.
“It wasn’t about redemption,” she said, to the glass.
“No.”
“It was about containment.”
“Yes.”
She turned around. He was close now. The kitchen was dim, the only light from the under-cabinet LEDs, casting upward shadows on their faces. She could see the faint, red mark on his forearm where Emily’s nail had caught him.
“I don’t trust this,” she whispered. “I don’t trust the calm. I don’t trust us not to fuck up the aftermath.”
“I don’t trust it either,” he admitted. “But I trust her fear. I trust your rage. I trust your clarity. You knew exactly what to do with Gina. You knew exactly what to say to Emily. You’ve always known. I just… I finally listened.”
He reached out, not for her hand, but for the place on her sleeve where a stray splatter of soil had dried. He picked it off, a careful, meticulous gesture.
“We don’t have to decide anything tonight,” he said, his voice low. “We just have to not break anything else.”
Cylene let out a breath she felt like she’d been holding for hours. The adrenaline was gone, leaving a hollow, vibrating fatigue. The fight was over. The war, maybe. But the field was a mess.
“I’m sleeping in Juliet’s room,” she said. It wasn’t a rejection. It was a fact.
He nodded. “I’ll be on the couch. If the phone rings.”
She moved past him, toward the hallway. At the entrance to the foyer, she paused, looking at the dark stain on the marble, the shards of the pot.
“Get a new plant tomorrow,” she said, without looking back. “Something with thorns.”
She heard the faint, almost silent huff of his breath—not a laugh, but an acknowledgment.
“Thorns it is.”
In the quiet guest room, she slipped into bed beside Juliet, who instinctively curled into her warmth. Cylene lay awake, listening to her daughter’s even breathing, feeling the slow, solid beat of her own heart. On the ceiling, the headlights of passing cars painted fleeting, silent movies. She thought of the footage swirling through the digital world, of Emily in a holding cell, of lawyers and headlines and the scripts that were now, finally, hers again.
The victory felt hollow, and heavy.
But the child in her arms was warm, and real. And in the living room, for the first time in a long time, the man she had once loved was standing a watch he should have always been keeping. It wasn’t a happy ending. It was just a quiet. And for now, in the wake of the screaming, the quiet was enough.
And for now, in the wake of the screaming, the quiet was enough. It lasted precisely seventeen minutes.
The doorbell was a sharp, formal chime that sliced through the apartment’s fragile calm. Cylene’s eyes snapped open in the dark guest room. Juliet mumbled, twisting the sheets. From the living room, she heard the rustle of Pedro getting off the couch, his footsteps hesitant on the marble.
She slid from the bed, her body protesting every movement. The digital clock glowed 11:17 PM. Through the peephole, the distorted view showed two men in severe, dark overcoats, their faces set in professional neutrality. One held a briefcase. The other was already glancing at his watch.
“Lawyers,” Pedro sighed, his voice rough with unsleep as he unlocked the door.
“Mr. Balmaceda. Balmaceda.” The taller one, whose name was Aris, gave a curt nod to Cylene as she approached. “Fischer sent us. We need to talk. Now.”
They moved into the living room without waiting for an invitation, their presence immediately claiming the space. Aris set his briefcase on the coffee table with a definitive click. The other man, Lowe, remained standing, a silent sentinel by the window overlooking the dark city.
“Is this a social call?” Pedro’s attempt at levity fell flat. “At midnight?”
“It’s a crisis management call,” Aris corrected, opening the case. Inside, tablets glowed, showing cascading news feeds. “Gina Shaw’s piece dropped forty-three minutes ago. It’s… comprehensive.”
Cylene wrapped her cardigan tighter around herself. “And?”
“And Emily Branson was just released on her own recognizance.”
The air left the room. Pedro stiffened. “Released? She assaulted my wife. On video.”
“She was charged. Then she made a call.” Lowe spoke for the first time, his voice a low monotone. “She has representation now. Hard-nosed litigation from Creed & Volek. They specialize in counter-offensives. They walked her out an hour ago, arguing the arrest was a publicity stunt orchestrated by you two.”
A cold laugh escaped Cylene. “Of course they did.”
“This is no longer a domestic dispute. It’s a media war with legal artillery.” Aris tapped a tablet, bringing up a screenshot of a trending headline. “Her narrative is pivoting. She’s now the ‘manipulated victim’ of a powerful director’s midlife crisis, driven to desperation by your combined harassment. The stolen script angle is being framed as collaborative zeal gone wrong, fueled by your,” he glanced at Pedro, “well-documented substance issues.”
Pedro flinched as if struck. The old wound, expertly prodded.
“My documented issues were her prescriptions,” he said, the words tight.
“We know. The public has a short memory and a taste for scandal.” Aris slid a document across the table. “Fischer’s position. He’s standing by you, Pedro, but contingently. You will both sign this joint statement, affirming your unified front and denouncing her ‘false narrative.’ You will attend a press conference tomorrow at ten AM at the studio. Together.”
Cylene didn’t touch the paper. “A press conference. To perform our unity.”
“To solidify the story before hers gains more traction. Your daughter was here, correct?” Lowe’s question was a landmine.
“She’s asleep,” Pedro said, a defensive edge sharpening his tone. “Leave her out of it.”
“She’s already in it. The clause in your divorce decree regarding Branson’s proximity to the child is now a central piece. It demonstrates prior, documented threatening behavior. We need to weaponize that, carefully.”
The word ‘weaponize’ hung in the air, ugly and necessary. Cylene saw the soil-stained marble of the foyer in her mind.
“What do you need?” she asked, her voice detached.
“You, on that podium, calm and unequivocal. You, Pedro, apologetic for your past ‘lapses’ but furious in defense of your family. No tears. No anger. Absolute conviction.” Aris looked between them. “Can you do that?”
Pedro looked at Cylene, a question in his exhausted eyes. She thought of Juliet, of the scripts sitting in a virtual vault, of Emily’s free, laughing face on some news panel.
“We can do that,” Cylene said, answering for them both.
“Good. Now, the other matter.” Aris produced another file. “The intellectual property lawsuits. With this new public record, our path is clear. We file against Branson and her production shell company at 9 AM. We will also be filing a formal complaint with the Guild to restore your membership, Cylene, and formally designate you as the sole author of Ironflare and Sapphire Shore.”
Hearing the titles aloud, her titles, in this sterile context, was surreal. The victory was a paper cup, crushed and empty.
“What does that mean, practically?” she asked.
“It means royalties. It means your name on the screen. It also means depositions. A lot of them. They will dig into every aspect of your life, your marriage, your divorce. They will try to find cracks.” His gaze was implacable. “You cannot provide any.”
Pedro sank into an armchair, the weight of it all visibly pressing down on him. “So we smile for the cameras tomorrow, then brace for a legal siege.”
“Essentially.”
“And Emily? What’s her next move?”
Lowe shifted by the window. “Unpredictable. But people like her, when cornered publicly, often escalate privately. She knows where you live. The restraining order is a piece of paper. Be aware.”
Cynna spoke. “Then you hire security for us for appropriate protection. She harms my daughter— YOU ALL WILL PAY FOR EVERYTHING.”
The quiet from before was now utterly gone, replaced by a hum of impending chaos. The lawyers packed their tablets away, their briefcase clicking shut with the same finality.
“Get some rest,” Aris said, without irony. “You have a performance tomorrow. Your most important one.”
They left as briskly as they arrived, the door closing with a whisper-soft thud. The apartment seemed to vibrate in their absence.
Pedro stared at the spot where the briefcase had been. “I’m so tired,” he said, not to her, to the room.
Cylene walked to the kitchen, poured two glasses of water, and brought one to him. Their fingers brushed during the exchange. A simple, accidental point of contact.
“We knew it wouldn’t be clean,” she said.
“Knowing and feeling are different countries.” He took a long drink. “I hate that they brought up Juliet. I hate that they used the word ‘weaponize.’”
“I know.” She sat on the edge of the couch, not beside him, but not across the room. “But they’re right. That decree is proof. It’s one of the only clean facts we have.”
He was quiet for a long moment. “When we’re up there tomorrow… what do I say? ‘I’m sorry I was an idiot who got drugged and stole your mother’s life’s work’?”
“No.” She looked at him, her writer’s mind already drafting. “You say you shit happened and you trusted the wrong person. You say you’re learning. You say your family is non-negotiable. You keep it in the present tense. Forward motion.”
“And you?”
“I’ll say I protect what’s mine.” She finished her water. “It’s the truth.”
From down the hall, a small voice called out, “Mommy?”
The performance was over. The need was real. Cylene stood, her body moving on a deeper instinct.
“I’ll go,” Pedro said, rising.
“Let me. She called for me.” She walked to the hallway, then paused. “Try to sleep. You’ll need it.”
He just nodded, a silhouette against the city-lit windows, already rehearsing lines for a courtroom that existed everywhere now. The battle had been loud and physical. The war was a silent, grinding procession of papers and pixels. And it had only just begun.
And it had only just begun.
The night unspooled in fits and starts, a tangled skein of shallow sleep and jarring alertness. Every settling creak of the penthouse became a footfall. Every distant siren was a car pulling up to the curb. Cylene lay beside Juliet, listening to her daughter’s breath, each inhale and exhale a metronome counting down to morning.
Pedro did not sleep on the couch. He sat in the dark living room, scrolling through the endless, scrolling aftermath on his phone. The video of Emily’s arrest played on a loop from different angles, tweeted, retweeted, memeified. Headlines called it everything from “A Star’s Fall” to “A Calculated Take-Down.” The comment sections were open wounds, spilling vitriol and partisan support. He turned the screen off. The darkness offered no relief.
At 5:47 AM, a gray, sour light seeped around the edges of the blinds. Morning arrived not with a sunrise, but with a gradual, oppressive awareness. It coated the room in a substance like dirty water. Cylene’s eyes were gritty, her mouth cotton-dry. The silence had texture now, thick with unspoken protocols and the script they needed to memorize.
She slipped from the bed. In the kitchen, she found Pedro exactly where she’d left him, still in yesterday’s clothes, staring at the dormant coffee machine as if its mechanics were a puzzle he’d forgotten how to solve.
“You look terrible,” she said, her voice raspy.
“You don’t look so award-winning yourself.” He didn’t look at her. “I ordered security. They’ll be downstairs at seven. A car at eight-thirty.”
“Fine.”
The normal words felt absurd. She filled the carafe with water, the pouring sound obscenely loud. The click of the brewer engaging was a starter’s pistol.
“What are we going to tell her?” Pedro finally asked, his gaze shifting to the hallway leading to the guest room.
“The truth. The small version.” Cylene got two mugs down. They were studio promotional gifts, glossy and impersonal. “We have to go talk to some people on camera today about what happened. To make sure the right story is the one that sticks.”
“She’s eight.”
“She’s smarter than both of us were at thirty.” The coffee began to drip, its rich, bitter scent cutting through the staleness. “She saw the fight. She heard the lawyers. Treating her like a porcelain doll now is just another kind of lie.”
He accepted this with a slow nod, running a hand through his disheveled hair. “And us? What’s our small version?”
Cylene poured the coffee, black for both of them. She pushed his mug across the island. “Our version is we walk into that studio together. We stand behind the microphones. We say our pieces. We walk out. That’s the only ‘us’ that matters for the next five hours. After… we figure it out.”
He took the mug, wrapping his hands around the ceramic for warmth. “Cool. Professional. Unified.”
“It’s not a feeling, Pedro. It’s a job. An air traffic control job. We just guide the narrative in for a landing without it exploding.” She sipped her coffee; it scalded a welcome path down her throat.
Juliet appeared then, her stuffed rabbit dangling from one hand. She looked from one to the other, her face carefully blank. “Is the angry lady coming back?”
“No, bug,” Pedro said, the words too quick, too forceful. He modulated his tone. “No. She’s not. But your mom and I have to go do some boring grown-up stuff about it this morning. Mrs. Alvarez is going to come stay with you, okay? You can have a pajama day. Watch all the cartoons.”
“Is it on TV? The boring stuff?”
Cylene exchanged a glance with Pedro. “Maybe. But it’s very, very boring. Just talking.”
“Talking is good,” Juliet said, with a solemnity that cracked something in Cylene’s chest. “Better than yelling and breaking plants.”
After that, the morning became a series of functional tasks. A shower for Cylene, the water hotter than necessary, sluicing away the sleepless grime but not the coiled tension in her shoulders. A change into the clothes the stylist from Fischer’s team had messengered over at dawn: a structured, navy blue dress that was armor in soft wool, with flats she could stand in for hours.
Pedro showered after, emerging in a crisp white shirt and dark jeans, the uniform of contrite casualness. A barber arrived to expertly tame his hair into something purposefully imperfect. They moved around each other in the bathroom, a silent, efficient ballet of preparation, passing the toothpaste without touching.
At 8:25, the intercom buzzed. The car was downstairs.
Cylene knelt before Juliet in the foyer, straightening the collar of her pajama top. “Be good for Mrs. Alvarez. We’ll be back after lunch.”
“Will you be you on TV?” Juliet asked, her small hand patting Cylene’s cheek.
“I’ll be a version of me,” Cylene said, the admission slipping out. “The one that gets the job done.”
The ride to the studio was a sealed, silent capsule. The security detail—a quiet man named Leo in the passenger seat—created a barrier from the world outside. Through the tinted windows, the city streamed by, oblivious. Pedro stared at his phone, scanning the latest updates from the legal team.
“They’ve already filed,” he said, not looking up. “The lawsuits. Your Guild reinstatement petition. It’s all public now.”
“Good.” Cylene watched a bike courier weave through traffic. Her fingers traced the seam of her dress.
“Fischer’s team wrote statements for us. They’re on the tablet in the back seat. We’re supposed to ‘internalize the themes, not memorize the lines.’”
“I’ll write my own.”
He finally looked at her. “Cylene. Don’t freelance this. Not today.”
“I’m not freelancing. I’m authoring. It’s what I do.” She held his gaze until he looked away, back to his phone. “He may be helping, but he doesn’t own the voice.”
The studio backlot was a controlled frenzy. They were ushered through a service entrance, past coiled cables and bored stagehands, into a green room that smelled of stale coffee and industrial cleaner. A makeup artist with tired eyes dabbed powder on Cylene’s face, muttering about “shine.” Pedro paced, a caged animal reviewing his talking points on his phone.
A production assistant with a headset cracked the door. “Five minutes. They’re setting the mics.”
The noise from the press bay bled in—a low, aggressive murmur of competing conversations, the thud of cameras being tested. It was the sound of the arena.
Fischer himself appeared in the doorway, his usual avuncular calm replaced by a wired intensity. “They’re primed. Remember, you’re not on trial. You’re providing clarity. Stay in the lane. Don’t take the bait if they ask about the affair, Pedro. Pivot to the theft. Cylene, your job is to be unimpeachable. Solid. Got it?”
They both nodded, a pair of soldiers before the charge.
The PA reappeared. “Okay. Let’s go.”
They walked down a short, dark hallway toward the blinding light of the set. Their steps echoed. Cylene felt Pedro’s hand brush against hers, not quite holding it, but seeking a point of contact. She didn’t pull away.
They emerged onto a low stage behind a bank of microphones. The flash of cameras was a physical assault, a stuttering, silent explosion of light. The murmuring crowd solidified into a wall of expectant, scrutinizing faces. Cylene’s vision narrowed to the glow of the cue cards, the sweat-slick feel of the podium under her palms.
Fischer stepped to a microphone. “Thank you for coming. Mr. Balmaceda and Ms. Balmaceda will read brief statements, then take a few questions.”
He stepped back. A profound, hungry silence descended.
Pedro leaned forward, his jaw tight. The lights made the faint lines on his face look like cracks in marble. He began to speak, his voice clear but carrying the gravel of fatigue. It was a performance, but underneath it, Cylene could hear the genuine strain, the shame he was trying to shape into responsibility. He called the scripts “a profound betrayal of partnership and talent.” He said the word “drugged” without flinching. He looked directly into the camera lens when he said, “My family is not a storyline.”
When he finished, he didn’t step back. He just looked at her, and gave the smallest, almost imperceptible nod.
It was her turn. Cylene felt the eyes, the lenses, the collective held breath. She adjusted the microphone, the squeal of feedback piercing the room. She didn’t have note cards. She had the truth, the sharp, hard edges of it she’d been forced to swallow for years.
“For a long time,” she began, her voice surprisingly steady, “I was told the story was mine to lose. That I was paranoid. That collaboration was messy. I believed that. I doubted myself.” She paused, letting the words hang. The room was utterly still. “I was wrong. This wasn’t messy collaboration. It was calculated theft. It wasn’t a personal failure. It was a professional crime. The evidence is now a matter of public record. So is the violence that followed when that theft was challenged.”
She could feel Pedro’s heat beside her, a solid presence. She looked away from the teleprompter, scanning the faces in the front row.
“This isn’t about scandal. It’s about credit. It’s about the work. My work.” The final two words landed like stones. “I’m here to reclaim it. We are done with the narrative she wrote.”
She stepped back. For a second, there was nothing. Then the room erupted in shouted questions, a cacophony seeking a crack. Fischer stepped forward, pointing to a reporter in the front.
The questions came like darts. About the affair. About the drugs. About the legal strategy. They pivoted, they deflected, they spoke in their practiced unison. Cylene’s mind was clear, sharp, operating on a higher, colder plane. She saw not people, but vectors of attack to be neutralized.
Then, a journalist from a trade blog stood, her voice cutting through. “Ms. Balmaceda, you’ve spoken of reclaiming your work. But the industry has a long memory for controversy. Do you honestly believe, after all this, you’ll ever truly work in this town again?”
It was the question that had lived in her gut for years. The room hushed, waiting for the polished, press-friendly answer.
Cylene looked at the woman, then slowly let her gaze travel across the entire silent, waiting bay. A faint, cold smile touched her lips, one the makeup artist hadn’t prepared for.
“I’m not asking for permission,” she said, her voice low but carrying to every corner. “I’m establishing precedent.”
Before the next shout could rise, Fischer moved, declaring the conference over. Hands grasped their elbows, guiding them back into the darkness of the hallway. The noise cut off abruptly as the heavy door swung shut, leaving them in sudden, deafening quiet.
They stood there for a moment in the dim corridor, breathing in the silence. The adrenaline was a tremor in Cylene’s hands now, a fizzy, descending shock. Pedro leaned against the wall, closing his eyes.
“You established precedent,” he repeated, a ragged breath of a laugh escaping him. “Jesus, Cylene.”
From inside his jacket pocket, his phone began to vibrate, not with a call, but with a rapid-fire sequence of alerts. He pulled it out, frowning at the screen. His expression shifted, the exhaustion sharpening into something else.
“What?” Cylene asked, her own pulse, just beginning to slow, kicking back up.
He turned the screen toward her. It was a news alert, stark white text on black.
SOURCE: LAPD CONFIRMS BRANSON UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR POSSESSION WITH INTENT TO DISTRIBUTE. WARRANT EXECUTED THIS MORNING AT HER RESIDENCE.
Below the headline was a photo, grainy but clear. Emily, in handcuffs again, being led from her building, her head bowed, that scarlet hair a violent splash against the drab police jacket.
“It’s not from our thing,” Pedro said, his voice hushed. “This is new. This is… different.”
Cylene stared at the image. The calculation in her mind, so precise moments before, splintered. This was an external variable. A bigger, uglier weapon she hadn’t pulled the trigger on.
“Whose precedent is this?” she whispered.
The phone buzzed again in his hand. This time, it was a call. The screen flashed: UNKNOWN NUMBER.
Pedro looked at her, a silent question in the greenish gloom of the hallway. The momentum of the morning was gone, replaced by a new, unfamiliar dread hurtling toward them. He swallowed, his thumb hovering over the screen.
“Do I answer it?”