Page 62 of Playing with Fire

But someday, I promised myself. Someday I'd say them when he was awake. When we were both ready to hear them.

Mymonitorsglowedinthe darkness of our makeshift command center, bathing the room in cold blue light. I'd transformed the Sentinel's media room into a war room within hours of our arrival, commandeering every piece of tech I could find and setting up a surveillance network that rivaled anything the FBI could build. Four days of searching, and I still had nothing solid on Phoenix.

I was trapped in this gilded cage while Dad recovered in a hospital bed I wasn't allowed to visit. Everyone else got to come and go—War with his medical expertise, Mom with her right as Dad's wife, even fucking River and Theo had been permitted to leave and return. But not Algerone's precious "assets." Not his sons. We remained locked away like artifacts while Maxime fed us sanitized updates, curated like we were children who couldn't handle the truth. With each passing hour, rage built in my chest with nowhere to direct it except into the hunt.

The latest hospital photo of Dad sat minimized in the corner of my screen. Bandages covered burns on his arms and chest, medical equipment surrounding him like some kind of cybernetic cocoon. They'd reduced his sedation yesterday. He was awake, asking for us. For me. And here I sat, uselessly scrolling through data while Phoenix remained free.

I shifted in my chair, wincing slightly. The bruises on my hips from Leo's fingers were tender reminders of how we'd spent the early hours of the morning. His way of helping me cope wasn't gentle, but it was effective. The sharp pleasure-pain had quieted the chaos in my head, at least temporarily. Without him, I'd have lost my mind completely by now, but the evidence of our encounters was written across his skin in purple-blue splotches. Fresh marks peeked from beneath his collar, joining the older ones that had faded to yellow-green. I'd apologized this morning when I saw them, but he just smiled that soft smile of his and said they helped him remember who he belonged to.

Leo caught me looking at him and raised an eyebrow. Always so fucking perceptive. Despite everything, I was grateful for his presence. Leo was the only one who didn't try to fix me or calm me down. He just gave me an outlet for my rage, a body to mark, someone to control when everything else was beyond my reach.

"This is fucking hopeless," I muttered, slamming my fist against the desk hard enough to make the monitors jump. Another search query returned zero results, mocking my efforts. Useless. I was fucking useless.

The timeline I'd constructed covered one entire wall. Every hunt, every target, every detail meticulously documented. Red string connected photos, reports, and locations in a web that looked more like a conspiracy board than actual detective work. And yet nothing connected. No pattern emerged. No child seeking vengeance for a parent I'd eliminated.

Still, I got up and marched over to it, studying it intently. The answer was here somewhere. Why couldn't I see it?

"If your brooding gets any more intense, they're going to cast you in the next Batman reboot," Xander drawled, eyeing me from his perch on the arm of the couch. "Though I must say, the whole 'obsessive vigilante surrounded by evidence' aesthetic really works for your bone structure. Very chiaroscuro."

I flipped him off, then winced as Xion's phone camera flashed.

"What the fuck?" I growled at him.

Xion slouched back in his chair and put his feet up on the table. "Boone asked for an update. He's losing his damn mind being away from our dogs for so long."

"Maybe you should take a break, Xavier," Leo suggested from his workstation beside me.

He'd been reviewing security footage for the past six hours, dark circles forming under his eyes. His fingers flew across the keyboard, the soft clicking of a familiar rhythm that usually calmed me. Not today.

Leo pushed out his chair and came to stand behind me, his hands settling on my shoulders to knead the knots that had formed there. "You've been at this for sixteen hours. Maybe a nap would help."

His touch was gentle despite the marks I'd left on him, each fingertip pressing precisely where the tension was worst. He was good at that—finding exactly where I hurt and applying just the right pressure.

"I'll take a break when Phoenix is dead," I snarled, but didn't pull away from his touch. His thumbs dug into the base of my skull, and I leaned into the pressure despite myself. "I just need to figure this out. Dad trusted me to handle this kind of thing, and I'm failing him."

"Hey." Leo came to stand in front of me, forcing me to look at him instead of the board. "You are not failing. We'll get this guy, Xavier, but you need to take care of yourself in the meantime, okay?"

I sighed, closed my eyes, and leaned forward, letting our foreheads touch.

"Awww, look at them," Xander cooed dramatically, pressing a hand to their chest. "Broody McBrooderson actually letting someone touch him without ripping their arms off. I'm feeling a bit emotional right now. Xion, are you seeing this? Our little sociopath is growing up."

Xion snorted without looking up from his phone. "Five bucks says they fucked in the security room last night."

"Please, I'm not taking sucker bets," Xander replied, waving a dismissive hand. "The camera feed mysteriously went dark for forty-three minutes."

"We didn't fuck in the security room," Leo corrected absently, still massaging my shoulders. "That's disgusting. Besides, there's not enough room for someone Xavier's size to bend over in there."

The room went dead silent. Leo's hands froze on my shoulders as he realized what he'd just revealed. Xander's jaw actually dropped—something I'd never seen in real life.

"Holy shit," Xander whispered reverently. "Little Leo's the top?" They gasped dramatically, eyes widening as a thought struck them. "Wait—oh my god. Are we all bottoms? Is this a genetic thing? Did we inherit our sexual preferences from Algerone?"

"Jesus Christ," Xion muttered, finally looking up from his phone. "That's not how genetics work."

"But what if it is?" Xander pressed, clearly delighted by their own theory. "What if Algerone himself is actually—"

"Don't," I growled, but it was too late. The image was already forming in all our minds.

Xander's face lit up with unholy glee. "I bet Maxime knows. I'm going to ask him."

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