Page 52 of Mayhem

That was enough.

Camille turned before I had to say anything else and headed toward the stairs. Talia followed immediately. Evan gave me a brief look that said he knew better than to involve himself, then went after them. Their footsteps receded through the upper floor until the sound disappeared entirely.

I stayed standing for another few seconds, mostly because I wanted to make sure Camille did not decide halfway down the stairs that she had one more thing to say. When nothing came back, I returned to the table.

Malakai had already turned toward Echo. “You made her step back.”

Echo sat down and reached for the article she had closed. “She stepped back because she expected me to stand there and let her talk.”

“She usually expects that from people.”

“That sounds like a habit somebody should have corrected earlier.” Echo opened the article again, then paused with her hand on the page and looked at me. “And before you start, I wasn’t going to hit her.”

“I wasn’t going to ask.”

Her eyes narrowed slightly, as though she had expected the argument and was almost irritated not to get it. She looked back at the page, but the pen stayed on the table.

Malakai picked it up, turned it once between his fingers, and held it out to her instead of stealing it. “You would’ve hit her eventually.”

Echo took the pen from him. “Eventually covers a lot of possibilities.”

I sat down and opened the folder again. The Friday seating list waited exactly where I had left it, Camille’s name still beside mine because Desmond had decided the arrangement was useful. I stared at it for a moment longer than necessary before dragging a line through the placement and writing a question mark beside the Voss section.

Echo made it through another page before she looked up again.

“Family business?”

Malakai answered before I did, still half-turned toward her with one elbow on the table. “Yeah.”

She tapped the end of her pen against the margin of the article. “You really are serious about that stuff. I thought half of it was rich people dressing up ordinary problems with dramatic names.”

Malakai leaned back in his chair and glanced at me once before returning his attention to her. “We grew up in it. Families, obligations, protection, debts, who owes what, who answers for who. Half the shit you think we’re being dramatic about is just normal to us because it’s been around us since we were kids. Somebody says a name, we already know what comes attached to it. Somebody asks for protection, that means something. Somebody takes a favor and refuses to pay, that means something too.”

Echo looked down at the pen in her hand for a moment, turning it between her fingers. “So Camille walking up here like she had the right to interrupt you wasn’t just her being an entitled asshole.”

“She is an entitled asshole,” Malakai said, his mouth twitching briefly before he continued. “But the access came first. Her family and Hunter’s have been tied together long enough that she grew up believing certain doors would always open for her. Most of them still do. That doesn’t mean Hunter has to give her whatever she wants once she gets through.”

Echo’s gaze moved toward me. “And the dinner?”

“Same structure,” I said. “Desmond moves people around the room because placement tells everyone watching what he wants them to believe. Camille beside me says something before either of us opens our mouths. Her family knows that. Mine does too.”

“That’s why she cared that I was sitting here.” Echo looked around the upper floor again, seeing the space differently now. “She thought you keeping business out of this room meant I wasn’t part of anything important.”

“She wanted it to mean that,” I said. “What I told her was that I wasn’t discussing it here.”

Malakai reached for Echo’s drink, stopped when she looked at his hand, and redirected toward his own without comment. “You keep thinking everything here is about permission. Sometimes it’s about responsibility. Hunter can let somebody into a room and still decide they don’t get the conversation. He can protect somebody and still hate them. He can owe a family and still tell one of them to fuck off when they overstep.”

Echo’s eyebrows lifted. “That last one seemed pretty clear.”

Malakai grinned, but he let the conversation keep its shape instead of chasing the opening. “Nichlas is the same thing. You keep looking at him and seeing a coward who found three men to hide behind. We look at him and see a protection order Desmond personally put his name on. The person inside it can be useless. The obligation still exists until somebody with the authority to change it says otherwise.”

She sat back slowly, one boot sliding farther beneath the table. “So when Hunter threatened to tear apart my life if I ignored the rules, that wasn’t because he cared about Nichlas personally.”

“No,” I said. “It was because if I let you ignore Desmond’s protection because I happened to agree Nichlas was a coward, every other protection tied to our name becomes weaker.”

Echo was quiet after that. She had never had trouble understanding systems once somebody stripped the ceremony away. I had watched it happen with Callum, then again when she claimed responsibility for Priya and the others. She resisted language she thought existed to make ordinary things sound important, but the mechanics underneath it made sense to her almost immediately.

Her eyes drifted toward the stairs Camille had disappeared down. “And Camille thought family history meant she still had some claim on you.”