Page 72 of Man of Lies

Ben was leaning against the bed rail like he’d been there a while, hoodie unzipped, ankle monitor flashing under the cuff of one rolled-up pant leg. He had that quiet look he got when he was trying not to make something worse.

“Jesus,” I croaked. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to watch you drool on the mattress,” he said, smiling slightly. “Don’t worry. I’ll keep it between us.”

I rubbed at my face, trying to wake myself up properly, though everything inside me still felt about two feet underwater. “How the hell did you know I was here?”

Ben shrugged, thumb hooking into the edge of his hoodie pocket. “Dom told me what happened.”

I blinked at him. “You’re still speaking to him?”

“Not like I got a group chat going with the rest of you,” he said, dry as ever.

I let out a low breath that might’ve been a laugh, except it stuck halfway down. “Last I heard, Gage still wants to rip his heart out and feed it to him, and Gideon looks like he’s praying for spontaneous combustion anytime Dom’s name comes up.”

Ben’s mouth twitched at that. “Yeah, well. He didn’t call looking to make peace. He needed help running interference with Gideon.”

I frowned. “Interference for what?”

“To place some of the girls,” Ben said. “The ones he pulled out right before the feds busted that trafficking ring in Mississippi.”

That gave me pause. It had only been a few days since the crash, and news was still coming out almost hourly on the local channels.

Dominic’s interference had paid off in the only way that mattered. The feds finally had enough to run a sting across the Mississippi border, and for once, it stuck. Dozens arrested. A handful of girls were taken into protective custody, and enough weapons and narcotics were seized to make headlines for weeks. The press conferences were already rolling—flashing lights, federal jackets, local politicians preening in front of microphones like they’d engineered the whole damn thing themselves.

But no one was claiming ownership of the operation. Whoever was running the thing had vanished, and so had most of the transport men on our side of the border—low-level thugs who kept their heads down and mouths shut. They weren’t in custody, but they weren’t on the street either. Whether they were in the wind or Dominic had found them first… that was anyone’s guess.

The bayou hid a lot of secrets.

No arrests had been made in Gator’s murder. No suspects, no names, and barely any mention of it in the news. Just a dead body in a condemned house and a rumor that maybe he’dgotten too greedy or crossed the wrong man at the wrong time. Whoever had pulled the trigger was long gone.

Instinctively, I glanced at Ben’s wrist, but it was covered by the frayed sleeve of his hoodie.

“And you agreed to help?” I asked, slower this time.

He looked at me then, eyes clear and steady. “I’m not in any place to judge what my brothers do, Mase. Not after everything. And if he’s trying to make it right, I’m not gonna be the reason he can’t.”

I leaned back in the chair and rubbed the grit from my eyes. Silas was breathing easily, and he’d been surfacing from his medicated sleep every few hours, but never long enough to do more than meet my eyes before he slipped away again.

That tether of hope I was clinging to felt thinner by the hour.

Ben hadn’t moved; he just stood there, arms crossed loosely over his chest, one foot braced against the bed frame. His hoodie was damp around the edges from a dash through the rain, but if he was uncomfortable, he didn’t show it. He just watched me with his sad, patient eyes, as if waiting for me to take an offer I didn’t even realize he’d given me.

Silence had always been his language of choice.

“You never said why you came,” I muttered. “A call from Dom isn’t a reason.”

Ben shifted his weight, arms still crossed, ankle monitor blinking once in the dim light. “We’re twins, Mase. You don’t have to earn my loyalty. You’ve already got it.”

He finally looked at me then, eyes steady. “I might be a mess—up here.” He tapped his temple with a vicious finger. “But you’re my brother. If you think I wasn’t gonna show up when you needed someone? You don’t know me at all.”

My eyes dropped to the scuffed linoleum, then drifted toward Silas, taking in his chest's slow rise and fall beneath the tangle of monitor lines.

“You’ve always been there,” Ben said. “For all of us. Backup even when we didn’t want it. Even Gideon relies on you, and you know he’d rather eat broken glass than admit to needing anyone.”

His smile was small and quiet, like a private joke between us, but I was too tired to smile back.

“You made yourself the foundation,” he said. “For everybody else’s damage. And you never stopped to ask if you were allowed to fall apart too.”

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