The Wolf Cub's Fangs

Miles did not come home that week.

It started small. A text: *Studying late, don't wait up.* Then a night with no message at all. Then two. The driver reported that the young master had left campus on his own; the security team reported that his phone was off; the housekeeper reported, with an accusing look, that the bed in the guest room had not been slept in.

"I told you to report the moment he showed up," Adrian said coldly.

Marcus stood at attention in front of the study window, hands clasped behind his back. "Sir, he hasn't shown up. That's the problem."

"Do my words mean nothing to you?"

"When the young master shows up, sir—"

"Don't blame him, Adrian," said a quiet voice from the corner.

Old Henry Pell, who had been Gabriel's consigliere and then Adrian's, had been sitting in the leather armchair so long that nobody noticed him. He folded his newspaper. "He's twenty. He's just lost the last piece of his father. He needs to break something. Let him."

"He's been out for days."

"Busy with what?"

"If I knew that," Adrian said, "I wouldn't be asking you." He pressed a hand to his temple. "I told him to come home. He said he'd come home when he was done."

*Go home first,* Adrian had said last night, over a bad connection and a worse silence. *I'll wait. And we'll go home together.*

A long breath from the other end. Then: *Not tonight, Adrian.*

That had been the whole call.

"Find him," Adrian said.

---

The bar was called the Anchor, and it smelled of old beer and wet wood. It sat on the last block before the docks, where men came to spend what they hadn't been robbed of yet. Adrian stood just inside the door, a pale outline in a dark overcoat, and watched the room go quiet.

"Sir." The bartender, a thick-necked man with a face like a boxer's, set down a glass with unusual care. "What can I get you?"

"A man in a black jacket. Twenty years old. Golden-brown hair."

The bartender's eyes slid, very slightly, toward the back.

Adrian crossed the room. The noise grew from the back corner, the unmistakable thud of a body against a wall, a bark of laughter, a voice slurred and nasty:

"—you think you can run this family, brat? Gabriel's dead. He's *dead*. And you're a spoiled little cub in a dead man's—"

A crack. A scream. The sound of a chair breaking.

Adrian rounded the corner just in time to watch Miles drop a heavy-set man to the floor with a single, brutal blow to the jaw.

The man curled up groaning. Two of his friends stared. Miles stood over them with blood on his knuckles and nothing at all in his face.

"Say my father's name again," he said softly, "and I'll teach you how it sounds in a dead man's mouth."

"Young—young master—"

"Get out."

"We didn't—"

"*Get out*."

They went. Dragging their friend, stumbling over each other. The room emptied behind them as if sucked out by a vacuum. And then there were just two men in a pool of broken glass, and the jukebox playing something sad and tinny in the corner.

Miles turned slowly. When he saw who stood there, his expression didn't change, but something behind it did, like a door sliding closed.

"Uncle." He wiped his knuckles on his shirt. "You came to the Anchor. That's a long way down for a man in a three-piece suit."

"You didn't come home."

"I'm busy."

"You're *hurt*—"

"It's not mine." Miles smiled without humor. "Is that why you came? To see if I was bleeding? Or to drag me back to the cage?"

"Don't use that word."

"Why? It's accurate." Miles took a step forward. His eyes were wild now, bright with something dangerous that Adrian had never seen. "I'm a thing you keep in a house. A good boy. A promise you made to a dead man. You can't leave me anywhere, and you can't touch me anywhere, and I'm so tired, Adrian. I'm so tired of being a *promise*."

"You're not—"

"You've been done mourning for months." Miles's voice cracked and recovered. "I saw it. I stood outside your door at night and listened to you not cry. You don't visit his grave anymore. You stopped talking about him. You're done. So tell me." He was close enough now to touch. "If you're done with him—then let me be the one."

"Stop it."

"Why? Because you're my father's brother? Because I'm his son?" Miles laughed, ragged. "Do you know what I am to you? Say it. Say the thing you tell yourself every night."

"Miles—"

"You're my father's brother. The man who wanted in his bed." The words came out like glass. "That's what you are. And I'm the boy who looks like him. So tell me, Adrian. Have I been the stand-in all this time?"

Adrian felt it land. It went through him like a spike.

"Do you remember who I am to you?" he said hoarsely, because it was the only thing he could think to say.

"I remember."

"I'm sorry." The words came from somewhere he hadn't known existed. "I'm sorry, Miles. I failed. I didn't raise you right." He closed his eyes. "He's up there watching. He must blame me for all of this."

"I'm not your son."

"I've always treated you as my son."

"Have you?" Miles said, in a voice so quiet it was almost gentle. "Then what about that morning? Why did you pull away from your *son's* arms? Why run to the bathroom for a cold shower?"

Adrian said nothing. There was nothing to say.

"Back then," Miles went on, as if narrating something far away, "who was I to you? Who do you take me for?" His mouth twisted. "Gabriel's son. Of course. The blood he left behind with another woman. A woman who sold her kid for a hit. A fine bit of leftover to keep warm."

"Don't."

"My parents were trash. Having me was their idea of a joke, just to put one more soul through hell." His breath hitched, and he made himself laugh. "Look at my mother. Floating in bliss. Come to think of it, why don't you take me to see her too? We could all be one happy family."

---

*It had been a month after the funeral when Adrian took the boy to see his mother.*

*It was a mistake. He knew that now. He'd thought a child should see his only living parent. He'd thought, foolishly, that blood might count for something.*

*They had stood in the doorway of a rancid third-floor apartment, and Rosalind Moretti, once the most beautiful woman on the Eastern seaboard, had lain on a stained couch with her eyes unfocused and a smile on her face. She hadn't known her son was there. She hadn't looked at him once.*

*And that was when the men had come in through the back.*

*Three of them. Her dealers, hungry, owed, and smelling a payday. One had snatched Miles by the collar and dragged him back against his chest, a blade at the boy's throat.*

*"Hold still," he'd hissed. "Hold still, you little—if I miss—"*

*Miles hadn't screamed. That was the thing Adrian would never forget. He had simply looked across the room at Adrian with enormous, trusting, frightened eyes, and gone perfectly rigid.*

*Adrian had shot the man between the eyes before he finished the sentence.*

*"You little beast!" another man had roared, lunging at the boy with a knife, and then Adrian was there, tearing him back by the hair, breaking an arm, dropping him. The third ran. Adrian didn't chase. He crossed the room in three strides and fell to his knees in front of the child, hands shaking, and checked his neck, his throat, his small cold fingers.*

*"Are you hurt? Miles. Are you hurt?"*

*"It's okay," the boy had whispered, as if comforting him. "Don't be scared."*

*Adrian had pulled him against his chest and held on so hard it must have hurt.*

*"From now on," he'd said into the child's hair, "you're with me. Forever. Nobody takes you anywhere again."*

---

"I've been using you," Adrian said now, slowly. He could hear his own voice from a great distance. "Haven't I?"

Miles went still.

"I've been using you as a stand-in," Adrian said, more to himself than to the boy. "You look like him. You have his hands. His laugh. And for eight years I've been wringing warmth out of you that I had no right to take, and I called it love, and I called it duty, and I never once asked what it was doing to you."

"That's not—"

"It's *on me*." His voice broke. "I shouldn't drag you into it. It's my fault. I should have let you go years ago."

"Adrian—"

"Maybe it's time I sent you away."

Silence.

It was so complete that Adrian could hear the dockside tide slapping against the pilings outside.

Miles stared at him. All the heat had gone out of his face, leaving it white and still and young. He opened his mouth. He closed it.

Then, without a word, he turned and walked out of the Anchor into the rain.

Adrian stood among the splinters of a broken chair and a half-empty glass, and understood that he had just done the right thing in the worst possible way.

It wasn't until two days later, standing in a cold cemetery with a bouquet of white lilies, that he let himself say it out loud.

"Gabriel," he told the polished stone. "Another year gone. I still couldn't bring Miles to see you. I wonder if you're curious." A thin, humorless smile. "He's been driving me crazy. Nearly gave me a stroke."

Marcus stood behind him with an umbrella, saying nothing.

"I'm sorry, boss," Henry Pell said gently from the gravel path. "But he's a good kid."

"I know he is. That's the problem." Adrian laid the lilies at the foot of the stone. "I've made up my mind. I'm sending Miles away. Abroad. Somewhere with a decent university and a long distance." He glanced back. "You'll back me on this, won't you, Henry?"

The old man didn't answer for a long moment.

Then he sighed, and said, "God help you, Adrian. I will."