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Chapter Text

Breaking into Russell’s apartment had been almost laughably easy. It’s not like Max hadn’t already spent a considerable amount of time staking the place out. He knew the grumpy old lady on the first floor always hauled her bins out around seven in the evening. He knew George had made a detour to the RE:START community centre on his way home. So Max simply slipped in behind the bin lady, even taking the bio-waste bin out of her hands to help her along.

And he knew exactly which apartment door was Russell’s, because it was the only one without any sort of decoration or personality – just a blank, sterile white door. Typical.

He waited until the corridor was empty before crouching down to work on the lock. He’s no Fernando – but he can pick a simple lock well enough when he needs to. And right now, he definitely needs to.

When he finally manages to get the door open – very glad neither Fernando nor Gabi are around to laugh at him – he’s greeted immediately by a pair of yellow eyes hovering a few handbreadths above the floor.

“Hi, Jimmy,” Max says as he slips inside, closing the door behind him. He crouches down, offering a hand. The cat approaches, sniffs him once, and then – very graciously – allows Max to scratch his head.

Max gets lost petting him for a few minutes. It’s been a long time since he’s had a chance to pet a cat, and he’s always loved them. Honestly, it’s Russell’s only redeeming quality that he has one. (Though Oscar claims Jimmy is the remnant of some past relationship and that Russell only kept the cat because he can’t look away from anything abandoned in this world.)

Jimmy doesn’t seem particularly bothered by the presence of a strange man in his owner’s apartment – but he’s a cat, not a dog, and cats are anarchists by nature. They don’t believe in ownership.

When Max was a kid, he’d had a cat – or rather, there had been a stray that he’d decided belonged to him. He’d called her Sassy. He used to sneak her tuna cans behind the motorhome, which Sassy, being a stray, gratefully accepted.

His father hated it. Hated Max feeding some random animal. He threw rocks at Sassy whenever she came looking for Max – whenever she dared get too close. Nothing had ever made Max’s hatred burn hotter.

At some point, Jimmy gets bored and starts meowing for food – truly not the most loyal of creatures – but Max ignores him, choosing instead to snoop around the apartment.

It’s surprisingly tasteful. A lot of furniture that prioritises form over function, warm colours, tall bookshelves stacked with art, literature, criminology, and law. Russell seems to be a history nut too – whole rows dedicated to the Wars of the Roses and the Cold War, two very… well… different conflicts, but clearly equally fascinating to him.

Max continues his quiet trespass, opening the door to the bedroom. Like the rest of the apartment, it’s in perfect order. The king-size bed is perfectly made, both sides matching, though only one nightstand is empty. The other holds two books he seems to be reading: a book on cryptography – probably Russell desperately trying to keep up with whatever Oscar spends his days tinkering with – and Wuthering Heights by one of the Brontës. Max can never keep them straight.

He tries to shake the image of Russell sitting in bed reading gothic literature. It humanises him – softens him – in a way Max absolutely cannot afford. Not when he’s come here to finally put an end to him.

The decision, once made, had been easy to follow through. 

It had begun when a very dishevelled Isack had returned to headquarters two hours ago – dirty, furious, retelling the entire ordeal in one breath. Max had been in the kitchen with Oscar when the words had come spilling out so fast Max had barely kept up.

Apparently Russell had apprehended him on the street, sent someone to chase him down, and then thrown him to the ground. Oscar had laughed when Isack told him the name of the perpetrator – some sort of ill-fated intern who enchanted the entire division through sheer enthusiasm alone.

Isack had told Max about Russell’s warning. That he’d let him go – but wouldn’t keep protecting them. Wouldn’t keep covering for them.

Max had mulled it over for several long minutes while Oscar watched him with that careful, assessing stillness he’d developed lately.

It’s now painfully clear to Max that Russell has more than just a soft spot for his old rookies. There’s a part of him that actively transgresses his own precious laws – because something in these boys makes him want to keep them out of jail. A similarity Max finds… harrowingly familiar.

But still, Max does not take kindly to anyone laying a hand on his boys – and Isack’s knee had been scraped, the intern or whatever having handled him with far less than reverent care. (Max is quick to rage.)

So he’d left the room with a muttered excuse, Oscar following him down the stairs.

“You’re not gonna do something dumb, Max, right?” Oscar had said, blocking the path. “We still need Russell. He has an important role to play.”

“We can manage without him.”

But Oscar shook his head. “No. I’m not letting you kill him.”

“I just want to talk to him,” Max lied.

Oscar narrowed his eyes.

“Fine,” he said at last, stepping aside. “But if I find a single scratch on my boss tomorrow, you’d better have an excellent explanation.”

Max had been seething the entire walk to Russell’s flat.

What the fuck had that man done to bewitch Oscar? His Oscar. Oscar was supposed to be on his side – an apathetic, aloof, antisocial extension of Max himself. Someone who agreed with Max’s plans and followed them through without flinching.

But something has shifted in him lately – something Max can’t quite define. He’s started doubting whether sending Oscar to work with Russell had been a mistake.

Because Oscar is distracted. Distant. Max has caught him slipping out of the apartment more than once, following him until he realised Oscar was just… taking walks. Around town. Pointlessly. Sometimes even walking into the National Gallery or the Tate Modern, staring at paintings – at fucking paintings, Oscar! – before walking out again.

It’s alarming. If Max didn’t know better, he’d suspect Oscar was working through a crush or something – and the idea of him falling in love with Russell is so outrageous it makes Max want to bang his head against the wall every time it crosses his mind.

Oscar wouldn’t. He can’t. That’s always been part of what Max likes about him – his inherent disinterest in other people. 

But there seems to be something awfully charismatic about Russell – the way his team is fiercely loyal to him, the way he still has Wolff’s ear – even after everything that went wrong. And Max has to be honest: after the amount of time he’s spent staking out Russell’s apartment and following him around town… is he really any better?

What is it about Russell?

If he really thinks about it, it’s that strange, unwelcome kinship. 

The fact that Max feels closer to him than to his own cousins, even though they share blood and he shares absolutely nothing with Russell except a shitty upbringing – one that became Max’s entire driving force and nothing more than a sliver of Russell’s origin story. For Russell, the hardship was the thing he overcame. The great adversity that forged him.

Max realises, standing in Russell’s apartment, the truth he’s spent months avoiding: He is deeply and utterly envious of him.

Because in the mythology Max has built around himself – the personal legend he’s clung to his entire life – Max gets to blame everything on the fact that two princes with inconceivable wealth wandered into that Flemish village, and a monster. And while his aunts chose the princes, his mother went home with the monster.

Max has always felt vindicated by that. Vindicated in his crusade and vindicated in being the one who was fucked over first.

But Russell is his antithesis. Russell isn’t stalking around at night, beating the shit out of people he thinks deserve it. Russell isn’t plotting a heist to steal a painting and a mountain of money. Russell didn’t just break into someone’s apartment, preparing to end their life for interfering with his plans.

Standing here, in Russell’s orderly, quiet, painfully normal home, Max feels – horribly – like he’s overcompensating. Like he’s in the wrong. Like he’s not dispensing poetic justice but behaving like a petulant child, or a maladjusted nutcase who wreaks havoc because he never got over something that happened before he was even born.

And it isn’t only that Russell managed to leave it all behind – to not let any of it poison him – it’s that he is actively doing good in a world that had been, at least in the beginning, nothing but incessantly cruel to him. Max knows how much devotion Russell pours into his work. His volunteering at RE:START. The way he leads his team. The way he’s won them all over. Even the way he took in his ex’s cat because he realised he could take better care of it.

Russell’s entire existence puts Max’s to shame – and he suddenly feels sick standing here in his apartment.

He retreats to the kitchen, passing Jimmy perched on the windowsill, staring out at the damp, foggy street.

Max rummages through the perfectly organised kitchen drawers until he finds a knife. He turns it over in his hand, then moves on. Russell’s taste in alcohol is clearly out of his price range; Max uncorks an expensive-looking bottle of single malt and takes a sniff before setting it down again.

Then he notices the corkboard above the counter – pinned with postcards sent to him by other people. Most are from Alex Albon, Russell’s closest friend at work – which is a bit pathetic, if Max is being honest.

But it’s the letter that stops him. The letter and the photo beside it. 

It’s the first photo he’s ever seen of Kimi and George.

Kimi looks young – unbelievably young – barely fourteen, though he must’ve been sixteen when it was taken. They’re somewhere in London. It’s a selfie: Kimi’s face filling most of the frame, George in the background, grinning at the camera.

Next to it is a folded letter. The handwriting is unmistakable – Kimi’s crooked, chaotic scribble. Max carefully pulls the page from beneath the edges of other pinned notes and reads:

Dear George,

You didn’t say a word but I overheard one of the social workers talk about it. It was your birthday and you didn’t even say. This is why I wanted to write you a letter and wish you all the best for your birthday. You are so painfully old that soon your bones will crack when you crouch down.

But I hope you’ll still come to the center. I’ve got to be honest: you are one of my favourite people here. Don’t tell anyone I said this sappy shit or I’ll deny it.

Thank you for everything you did for me this year. Especially that you have a PlayStation and let me play Spider-Man on it. But also the rest. You know.

Okay I’m rambling now and Gabi keeps trying to see what I’m doing so I’m gonna stop.

See you soon.

Yours,

Kimi

Max suddenly feels very weird. 

He pins the letter back onto the corkboard with trembling fingers, but he doesn’t step away. He just keeps staring at the photo. 

Kimi never talks about Russell – and now Max understands why: He loves him. With the same blind devotion you reserve for an older brother who would walk through fire for you. And Max realises – sickly – that Kimi never stopped loving him. Which means that pulling a gun on Russell must have been the hardest thing Kimi has ever done.

How do you go from writing someone a letter like that to threatening to murder them without hesitation?

Is that Max’s touch? Is that what he made Kimi?

He stares at the photo again – Kimi’s broad, open grin, the whale-tail necklace sitting against his collarbone. Russell in the background wearing a sweater under a Crystal Palace jersey. Max hadn’t clocked it at first, but now he sees they’d been at a football match together. Kimi in his Tottenham kit. Palace vs Spurs. They’d gone together. Of course they had.

How much time had Kimi spent with Russell? Because this doesn’t look like a sterile mentor-mentee thing. This looks… familial.

Max doesn’t know what to make of it. That Kimi had this – all of this – with Russell… and still chose to abandon him for Max. The realisation sits like a stone in his throat.

He looks down at the knife in his hand. And suddenly it feels idiotic. Juvenile. Pathetic.

Max is fiercely protective of his rookies – but so is Russell. The letter proves it. The fact that he still keeps it proves it.

And there’s more. Max hadn’t noticed at first, but as he looks again at the corkboard he sees a drawing pinned near the bottom corner. The London skyline as seen from Scotland Yard, sketched in confident, spiky pencil lines. The initials T.H. in the corner.

Tina. Max didn’t even know she could draw.

He feels like he’s learning more about his rookies from Russell’s apartment than from living with them for a year. Every little hidden talent, every private interest pinned on that corkboard makes something sour rise in his chest. And suddenly he understands why Russell told him he was ruining them – why Russell had looked him in the eye and said he was using them for his own gain. 

Because clearly Russell brought out sides of them Max never even saw. Tina can draw. And Kimi loves the Spurs, writes heartfelt letters, grins wide enough to split his face. 

Max sees now that he has taken each of those soft, bright things and stamped them down. He taught Tina to pickpocket instead of paint. Taught Kimi to rob jewellers instead of taking him to see the Spurs.

Maybe they really should have stayed with Russell. Maybe Russell would have dragged them to uni by the scruff of their necks, with that same relentless conviction he applies to everything else he believes in.

Before Max realises what he’s doing, he slips the photo into his pocket. Then he picks the knife back up.

He switches off the kitchen light and walks silently to the living room. The room fills with shadow, warm streetlamp glow bleeding in around the curtains. He doesn’t know yet what he’s going to do when Russell walks in. 

Is he really going to spill the blood of the same man Kimi once wrote that impossibly sincere letter to? The same man Tina sketched for?

It feels wrong. Wrong and spiteful and small. But wrong, spiteful and small is exactly what Max was raised on. Exactly what he learned from a father who taught him that violence was an answer before language ever was.

So he stands by the window, next to the one where Jimmy sits. Jimmy flicks an ear but doesn’t move. The cat seems content with Max’s company, which somehow makes it worse.

Max waits. Russell takes his sweet time tonight, and Max watches the fog thicken and blur the orange cones of the streetlights outside. He listens to the distant murmur of the building – pipes groaning, water running, someone pacing overhead. Jimmy shifts occasionally, tail twitching.

And so the two of them – a stray cat in a stranger’s home, and a boy raised to become a knife – wait in the dark for George Russell.

It’s after eight when Russell finally makes an appearance. Max spots his lanky silhouette in the glow of the streetlamps below – and he’s not alone. One of the social workers from the community center walks beside him, talking animatedly, hands moving, her face turned up toward his. Max leans forward slightly, narrowing his eyes. Why is she walking him home?

They stop in front of Russell’s door. Max pulls deeper into the shadows as both of them look up at Jimmy sitting impatiently on the windowsill, meowing for attention. He sees them laugh at the sight. Then the woman takes out her phone and hands it to Russell, who types in his number. She looks up at him again, smiling in a way that makes it instantly obvious how smitten she is.

“See that, Jimmy?” Max mutters before he can stop himself. “Looks like your owner’s found someone who’s quite taken with him.”

He’s spent more time than he’d like to admit wondering why Russell doesn’t have a girlfriend. Objectively, he’s a catch. He takes care of himself, as his annoyingly tidy apartment shows. He’s good with kids – painfully good, now that Max has seen the evidence for himself. He’s selfless. He earns decently. He went to Eton and then Balliol. And – Max has to admit this, if only to himself – he is one of the most attractive people Max has ever seen.

Even now, in the dim pool of the streetlamp, Russell’s face looks almost angelic. All those annoyingly perfect angles, the long nose, the dark lashes framing those glacial blue eyes – Max finds himself staring before he notices what’s actually happening. Russell bends down and kisses the woman.

For a split second Max doesn’t react. Then something hot and quiet flares in his chest – an understated rage he refuses to name as anything other than disgust at his mortal enemy getting more action than him. He isn’t even that much into women, not really. It’s not that. It’s absolutely not that.

But he still stares. At the way she rises onto her tiptoes immediately, as if she’s been waiting all night for this. As if the mere fact that that man – this walking allegory of a perfectly put-together life – decided to kiss her is some kind of blessing.

Of course George Russell is the kind of man women stand on their tiptoes for, Max thinks bitterly.

Jimmy seems to agree with his assessment; the cat lets out an indignant meow and hops off the windowsill, weaving around Max’s legs. Max gratefully scoops up the distraction, crouching to scratch behind Jimmy’s ears.

“Man, this is just humiliating,” he mutters. “I’m lurking in his apartment, fully ready to murder him, and he’s too busy downstairs sticking his tongue down someone’s throat.”

Jimmy meows again, almost as if in agreement.

“Is that a habit for him?” Max asks the cat. “I bet women tend to throw themselves at him.”

Jimmy gives him a long, pitying look, the kind only a cat can deliver. A look that clearly says: Are you seriously talking to a cat right now?

When Max glances out the window again, they’re still talking, and now the woman is full-on blushing, eyes bright and shiny. They’re probably making plans, Max thinks – stupid, irrelevant, philistine little plans that fit their stupid, irrelevant, philistine little lives. He watches as she finally turns to leave, only to bounce back on her heels and kiss Russell on the cheek before actually walking away.

Max tries to catch Russell’s expression, but he doesn’t look especially smitten – more… thoughtful, like his mind is already somewhere else. Russell watches her go, then turns toward the door. Jimmy must hear him downstairs; the cat’s ears perk, and he trots across the hall to sit in front of the window like a sentry.

Max takes the knife again, moves across the room, and drops himself into one of Russell’s bizarrely shaped chairs. He settles in just as he hears the key turning in the lock. A wedge of light spills into the dark apartment from the corridor, casting Russell’s long shadow into the living room. Russell bends to scratch Jimmy’s ears, completely unaware.

There’s the rustle of fabric as he shrugs out of his coat and tosses his keys into the dish. Jimmy meows insistently, weaving around his ankles, and Russell’s voice is low and exasperated: “Oh my god, calm down.”

Still mumbling to the cat, he steps into the living-room-slash-kitchen, and the dim hallway light is enough for him to register Max’s shape in the chair. He jerks, confused, and reaches for the light switch.

Max, who has been lurking in the dark for the past two hours, flinches violently as the room floods with brightness. The knife slips from his fingers and clatters onto the floor.

“Mate,” Max complains, blinking hard. “A little heads-up next time.”

Russell stares at him – one sharp, shocked heartbeat – before he moves. In an instant he’s across the room, slamming into Max, knocking the chair backward so they crash to the floor in a mess of limbs. The knife skitters across the hardwood as Russell kicks it out of reach, all before Max can even react.

“Fuck you,” Russell snarls. “I’m going to fucking kill you.”

The sheer hostility – the raw, unfiltered violence – feels completely at odds with the man whose apartment Max has been wandering through for the last three hours. Max had built an image of Russell in his mind: the man who rose above it all, despite it all; the golden child of rehabilitation; the idealised version of what Max could never be. But it only takes one look at Max for that whole façade to collapse. Russell explodes into nothing but rage and shredded restraint – rage that Max has been cultivating, nurturing even, since their last encounter weeks ago. The spores he planted have sprouted deep.

And so there’s a grim, twisted sense of pride swelling in Max’s chest as Russell goes straight for his throat – just like he would. Exactly like he would. Russell straddles him, pinning him down, or at least believing he is. Max lets him. He can’t help but grin.

“I see we’re skipping pleasantries,” he manages, despite Russell’s fingers digging brutishly into the skin of his throat. “You move quick, Russell. I like that.”

In that familiar, narrowing haze of oxygen deprivation – the sharp pressure, the sparkles at the edges of his vision – Max’s mind jumps to the book on Russell’s nightstand. A book he hasn’t read, knows nothing about, except for a single line that drifts into his head now, unbidden, as though pulled from some buried place: He’s more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.

It haunts him, inexplicably. Maybe because this – this instant, instinctive move – this reaching for the throat, wanting to kill with bare hands, with fingers that carry thin scars from a past full of broken bones – is the one place where the two of them meet perfectly. The one place where they are made of the same material. Whatever they are made of.

Russell hovers over him, body heavy and unyielding, fingers digging hard into his throat, and Max is reeling. He doesn’t have to lurk in dark, grimy warehouses anymore if he has this – Russell, his nemesis or whatever Russell has become, eyes blazing with murderous intent. It’s intoxicating. It gives him life.

Unfortunately, it’s also killing him at the moment. And Max isn’t quite ready to die yet – not when he still has use for his life, not when ending it here under Russell’s hands, poetic as it would be, would ruin the entire plan.

So he lifts his hands to Russell’s and feels the thin, lengthwise scars under his fingers – scars he recognises, scars he understands – before he pries Russell’s grip loose, one finger at a time.

Russell’s expression is priceless: horrified, confused, almost disbelieving. Max can’t tell what exactly he’s reacting to. The ease with which Max breaks the chokehold? The sudden realisation that Max was merely toying with him? Or the dawning horror that he, the moral crusader and eternal defender of the good, has just been caught in an abominable act of vigilantism – bypassing every rule he claims to uphold because he wanted the kill for himself.

It’s the second time today Russell has betrayed his own principles. He didn’t turn Isack in. And now he’s trying to squeeze the life out of Max with his bare hands.

“My father’s rage knew no bounds,” Max says, and he can feel his throat burning, his voice rough and shredded from Russell’s grip. “He loved hitting me. Throwing me off things. Holding my head under water.” It hurts to speak, but Russell is still hovering over him, staring down with that sharp, shaken look in his clear eyes, and Max can’t stop the words from forcing their way out. “But he especially loved putting his hands on my throat and squeezing the breath out of me.”

There’s something flickering in Russell’s expression – something like reluctant understanding, or maybe the horror of recognising a terrain he didn’t expect to share. Max uses that hesitation, flips him, and suddenly Russell is the one pinned to the floor beneath him. Russell’s chest heaves, his breath coming fast, his face drained of colour as he looks up at Max.

Max doesn’t know why he’s saying any of this. He’s never admitted it to anyone – not to Fernando, not to Oscar, and certainly not to Kimi.

Why is Russell the exception?

“I killed my father,” he says finally, and the words feel like absolution – like coming up for air after eight years underwater. “I kill everyone who puts a hand on me.”

It’s meant to be an explanation, a warning, a death sentence. So why does it sound so unbearably tender? Why does it feel like he’s tracing the edge of a blade down Russell’s skin instead of delivering the threat Russell deserves?

“Then fucking do it,” Russell spits in his face. “Get it over with.”

Max stares down at him – at that infuriatingly perfect face, the full mouth and long elegant nose, the shock of caramel hair, the smooth ivory skin. He looks like a prince, like someone born to those schools he had to claw his way into. The scars on his skin, the ones Max felt under his fingers, feel wrong. Russell shouldn’t have scars. His skin should be unmarked, his fingers unbroken, his body untouched by hurt. He’s almost too perfect to have lived through anything resembling Max’s life.

“I cannot,” Max manages, eyes tracing Russell’s features as if trying to disprove the uncomfortable familiarity he keeps finding. “I came here intending to do it. But I just realised…” His gaze catches on another small scar – faint, hidden just above Russell’s left eyebrow. Another matching mark. Another fragment of a shared history neither ever asked for. “…that I can’t.”

He can’t stay this close. Every second pushes him toward a truth he doesn’t want to see. The knife is somewhere under the sofa now – irretrievable, irrelevant. The moment is gone. Whatever he came here to do won’t happen tonight. Probably won’t happen ever.

Oscar was right. Russell is too important to the plan. And, in the end… Max realises with a reluctant, sinking clarity… he doesn’t deserve to die.

“Why not?” Russell asks, voice low and pushed through what sounds like disbelief. As if he can feel Max faltering.

Max thinks of the photo in his pocket – Kimi and Russell shoulder to shoulder, grinning into the camera like brothers. He thinks of the letter, Tina’s drawing, all the little pieces of his rookies Russell kept. And suddenly the situation shifts in his mind.

This is an opportunity. One he hadn’t considered because he never wanted Russell anywhere near him.

But if the past few weeks have revealed anything, it’s that George Russell is not the man Max thought he was. He is no perfect little soldier executing orders on command. George Russell is deeply, catastrophically conflicted.

So Max says: “Because you’re the only one who can save Kimi and the others. Are you not?” He tilts his head, studying Russell’s face from mere inches away. He sees it – the tiny, involuntary widening of Russell’s pupils. 

“And the best part is,” Max continues, voice almost soft, almost fond, “you’re going to do it.” He leans in just enough that Russell can feel his breath against his cheek. “No matter what it costs you.”

Russell blinks rapidly, as if trying to shake Max out of his head. “You’re awfully presumptuous,” he finally bites out. “These kids made their choice. I’m not going to begrudge them that anymore, but I’m not going to help them either.”

“So why are you keeping all their things?” Max asks. “The letter on the corkboard?”

Russell slicks back his hair – still a mess from throwing himself at Max – and even though Max is still close enough to touch, Russell doesn’t try to lunge him again. The rage that had torn through him seems drained now, leaving something hollow in its wake. Defeat. Exhaustion. And Max has to admit: he likes how pathetic he looks like this. There’s something dark in Russell’s eyes, something venomous pooling there and turning them almost black.

“As a reminder,” Russell says. “To never take good things in your life for granted.”

“That’s so uncharacteristically self-deprecating of you, Russell,” Max scoffs. “Giving up the holier-than-thou approach where you blame me for everything wrong in your life?”

“I do not blame you for everything wrong in my life,” Russell snaps back – and Max notices how his gaze keeps flicking down to Max’s throat. The bruises must already be blooming. Is he intimidated by what he left behind? Or simply horrified by his own loss of control? “That would be irrational. But I do blame you for stealing Kimi’s life. And the lives of the others.”

“What do you think happened?” Max asks, genuinely curious. “Do you think I fed them fairy tales about riches beyond their wildest dreams? You’re doing them a disservice with that, Russell. They’re smarter than that.”

“I think you used their perceived powerlessness,” Russell says, voice tight. “And made them believe they could become something.”

“Didn’t you do the same?” Max asks.

Russell sighs deeply, dragging a hand through his already disheveled hair, his back pressed against the overturned chair. “Fuck. Maybe. But I never saw it that way.”

It’s a rare concession, and Max allows him the space to make it.

“I realised,” Russell goes on, “that I never should’ve introduced Kimi to the police. But there was this… incessant need in him to do good. He was sixteen, seventeen, obsessed with Peter Parker. With Spider-Man. I always felt he saw himself in him. And Parker does everything he can to save people.”

“But Spider-Man isn’t police,” Max points out.

“Yeah,” Russell snaps, impatient. “I get that now. But vigilantism isn’t a viable option in the real world. And how was I supposed to know you were out there making them believe that?” He glances at Max – still sitting on the floor beside him, leaning against the toppled armchair. “I still believe leading them down a life of crime is a crime in itself.”

“I didn’t lead them down a life of crime,” Max says. “They found me first. Heard about me. Sought me out.”

Russell stares at him. “What do you mean?”

“Yeah.” Max shrugs, almost amused. “I didn’t go around with flyers. They’re smart kids. They heard about me and got curious. Isack and Gabi actually found me first. Said they were fans of my work and wanted to know if I was hiring.”

“Fan of your work?” Russell echoes, pure disbelief in his voice.

“I don’t know,” Max admits. “When you’re seventeen, eighteen, you fall in love with a certain brand of anarchism.”

It had reminded him of Oscar, in a way – Oscar showing up at his door after hearing about his small-time scams, convinced they could be improved. There’s something about him, Max thinks, something that calls through the void and pulls certain people in. Sympathisers, strays, aspirants – people who needed a cause, and found him instead.

“I don’t think that absolves you,” Russell says at last, loosening the collar of his shirt. Max can’t help staring. The movement is impatient, almost irritated – like the conversation with Max is making him run hot and he needs air.

“Just because Gabi and Isack were looking for purpose in a vulnerable phase of their life and threw themselves at you,” Russell continues, “doesn’t mean you should’ve taken them in.”

“I wasn’t planning to,” Max says truthfully. “But then–”

“Then you met Kimi.”

The way Russell says it – immediate, certain – makes Max freeze for a heartbeat. It’s strange. He’d always thought he was uniquely susceptible to whatever strange charisma Kimi carries around – the wicked sharpness, the fierce loyalty, that brightness that sneaks up on you. But Russell reads it instantly.

“There was a phase where I just… met with them,” Max says. “They intrigued me. And even though I wasn’t going to rope them in or anything, I found them funny. Interesting. They had some really radical ideas.”

“Universities are a great place to explore radical ideas,” Russell replies, his voice cool. “Not start a self-experiment that inevitably ends with the participants in jail.”

Max laughs. “That’s how you’d love it, isn’t it? Brilliant minds dulled in lecture halls and debate clubs until whatever emerges is a perfectly boring regurgitation of whatever for-profit think tank pays best to make everything worse.”

“Robbing people is hardly a novel contribution to political philosophy,” Russell shoots back immediately.

Max laughs. “Ha. Maybe. But your boys can do more than that.”

“They’re not my boys. They never were.” Russell fixes him with a cold, unwavering stare. “As you made perfectly clear.”

“They are though,” says Max. “I didn’t want to accept it at first – because how could they have ever been your disciples? A boring, servile, unimaginative man who gladly took on the mantle of defending an institution that failed him as a kid.” He tilts his head. “But that’s not what you are, is it?”

Russell laughs, bitter and short. “I would much rather you think of me as boring, servile, and unimaginative than have you draw some comparison between us because you think you’ve figured something out about me.”

“Why?” Max asks. “You scared of looking in the mirror?”

“And with ‘mirror’ you mean what? Yourself?” Russell scoffs. “You and I couldn’t be more different. We might’ve started in the same place – fine, I’ll give you that – but it’s very clear you never managed to get over it. And I have.”

“It’s not the flex you think it is,” Max says, giving him a small smile that seems to ignite Russell’s temper. “You should be angrier.”

“Why? What good would that do anyone?” Russell counters. “Most of us lead shitty lives, Verstappen. And we don’t all go berserk over it. You’re a special case because you have this… perfectly crystallised injustice standing right in front of you at all times: your cousins. Both chosen. Both living lives most people can only dream of. And you – decidedly not.”

“That proves my point,” Max replies. “The injustice that happened to me is visible. Most are not. What I went through sharpened my glare to all of them.”

“That’s why you started scamming people? Robbing them? Defrauding them?” Russell’s voice is full of dry contempt. “Great reasoning, Verstappen.”

Max sighs, rolling his eyes. “Well, the people you work for do the same. The boys figured that out. They’d rather be the architects of their own fortune than help build someone else’s.”

“You can repeat that as often as you like,” Russell says coolly. “You still steal. And stealing is morally wrong. No amount of goalpost-shifting changes that. You taught the boys to steal instead of helping them hone their skills so the fruits of their efforts could build something.”

“They are building something,” Max says. “A world where people like my cousins have to learn the same fear I did growing up. The fear it could all disappear. The fear of getting incredibly hurt. The fear of not knowing what comes next.”

“But that’s not… an honourable crusade,” Russell replies with a tired sigh, as if worn down by Max’s logic. “You’re not teaching them some esoteric truth that will help them survive the world. You’re using them for your own personal vendetta. And they are going to get caught. They’re going to get hurt. They’re all repeat offenders now – not juvenile delinquents who’ll be reprimanded with a slap on the wrist and sent to a community center. No, Verstappen. This time it’s jail. And you know that.”

“They’re not going to get caught.”

“I literally caught Isack today.”

“Because you know him,” Max counters. “Besides, they’re not going to be here forever.”

He sees Russell’s head snap up. “What do you mean?”

Max ignores the question and pushes forward. “Look. Russell. We’re on opposite sides in every possible way except one – what happens to the boys and to Tina.”

“If you think I’m going to collaborate with you for their sake, thereby helping you with whatever schemes you’re pulling, you are sorely mistaken.” Russell’s stare is acid, pure disbelief that Max would even attempt such a ploy. Max notices his gaze flick to his throat again; the bruises must be blooming vividly. They’ll be spectacular tomorrow.

“Oh, absolutely,” Max says, and because he’s a little shit, he turns his head in the dim light so the marks stand out clearly. Russell winces – actually winces – then tears his gaze away and fixes it on Jimmy, who has slunk back into the doorway after the earlier commotion.

“Your idealism,” Max continues, “is the strongest force in your life. I’ve already figured that out.”

“You do not know me.” Russell still refuses to look at him, eyes fixed on the cat as if Jimmy might deliver him from this entire conversation. “I don’t know what kind of misguided manipulation you think you’re running here, but I won’t help you. I’m working against you, Verstappen, and I will throw you in jail.”

Max sighs, almost gently. “Russell. You won’t manage it. I don’t doubt your skills or your conviction, but I’m afraid I might just be… too smart to get caught.”

Russell scoffs so loudly Jimmy flinches, bolting back into the other room as if expecting them to start strangling each other again. “I almost had you at the museum.”

“No,” Max says, pityingly. “Like you didn’t just have me right now.”

“I could say the same about you,” Russell replies. “You set out to kill me, and yet I’m still alive. And a month ago you saved my life. I feel like we’re both failing at our duty.”

Max tilts his head, as if conceding the point – because Russell isn’t wrong. He has failed. But too much depends on Russell surviving, at least for now. Oscar’s strange insistence on keeping him alive, and that unexpected tether to Kimi – embodied in the photo Max now carries in his pocket for reasons he won’t examine too closely.

“I thought you didn’t like it when I drew parallels between us,” Max says with a small grin. “And now look what you’re doing.”

“I don’t want you equating my childhood with yours,” Russell snaps. “Because you‘re wrong about everything in regard to that. But…” His jaw tightens. “I can’t deny there’s a kind of parallelism between us.” He shakes his head, forcing himself back on topic. “I might not have caught you yet, but you can’t hide from me forever. Maybe I’ll use the boys to get to you.”

“I don’t think you will,” Max replies, his voice steady and certain. But he doesn’t miss the hardness creeping into Russell’s tone now – the edge that wasn’t there before. Max would be stupid to ignore it. The boys have wounded him, again and again. First Kimi pulled a gun on him. Then Isack tore into him with words Max knows hit their mark. Rejection upon rejection. There’s only so much a man like Russell can take before something inside him turns sour.

“Which is why I want to offer you a deal – so you don’t have to,” Max says.

“A deal?” Russell laughs, sharp and disbelieving. “Are you out of your mind?”

“Listen to me first.”

It is strange, Max thinks, how they’re still sitting on the floor like two exhausted drunks at the end of a long night – both breathless, both frayed, neither rising to reassert dominance. Russell hasn’t even tried to stand above him. They’re eye-level, in the rubble of their overturned chair, as if something between them has shifted without either of them consenting to it.

“I will not make a deal with the devil,” Russell snaps. “If you force me to choose between what’s right and saving the kids, I’ll choose what’s right. Every time.”

“That’s why I’m not forcing you to choose.” Max leans in slightly, steady. “I’m offering you something better.”

“I will not make a deal with you.” His voice is categorical, that quiet conviction that makes Max think he actually means it.

“I’ll turn myself in,” Max says, before Russell can go further down his righteous tirade. “When this is all done. I’ll turn myself in – to you, and only you. I’ll play along. You can tell everyone you caught me.”

Russell stares at him like he’s sprouted horns. “Are you fucking deranged?”

“I might be,” Max says lightly. “But that decision I made with a clear mind.”

“Why would you do that?”

“You haven’t figured it out?” Max asks.

Russell grimaces – because he has figured it out, and he hates that he has. He hates that he’s spent enough time thinking about Max to understand him.

“It’s not about the money for you,” Russell says, finally. “Or the life you could lead with it. You want to hurt your cousins. Humiliate them beyond measure. Whatever you have planned…it’s personal.”

Max grins – because hearing Russell articulate it feels like an unexpected validation, the kind only an equal can give. “You know me well.”

“Don’t flatter yourself,” Russell snaps, but his eyes betray him.

“Of course,” Max goes on, “that kind of gift doesn’t come without something in return.”

Russell’s jaw sets. “What do you want from me?”

“Your word you’ll keep the boys out of it. Over the next months, but also afterwards.”

“I don’t have that power,” Russell says immediately. “I’m not Wolff. And even if I were Wolff, I still wouldn’t have that power.”

“Then the deal is off,” Max says with a small shrug, as if the entire fate of his own life were a casual throwaway. He uses the chair to lift himself to his feet, and Russell rises too. Max rights the chair with an almost mocking pat to the backrest before turning toward the door.

Russell stays frozen, brow furrowed as though he’s still processing the insane deal Max just dropped and then casually withdrew. “You’re leaving?”

Max laughs and glances back at him. “I came to kill you, or make a deal with you. Since you denied me both, I don’t see any reason why I should stay.”

Russell doesn’t move. He stands there with that look again – something tight under the surface, something he doesn’t want Max to see. But Max sees it anyway, the flicker of temptation, the ugly flash of curiosity. The offer is outrageous, morally obscene, and yet Russell looks as though some part of him wants to take it. 

Because of course he does. The man has always known he was exceptional, always wanted the world to confirm it; and Max’s offer promises exactly that. Arresting Max Verstappen would make him untouchable. A career-making move, and a legend that would follow him for the rest of his life. And at the same time, he could keep the kids safe. His kids – no matter how often he insists they aren’t.

It would cost him a piece of his integrity, yes. But Russell has already crossed lines today: he should have dragged Isack in, should have given Kimi’s identity to the department, should have called for backup instead of throwing himself at Max like a man possessed. He hasn’t been the righteous little soldier he thinks he is for a while now.

“Alright,” Max says. “I’ll leave you to your moral turmoil, if you don’t mind.” He casts one last look at Russell, who just stands there staring at him – and Max sees his gaze flick, yet again, to the marks blooming on Max’s throat.

“Wait,” Russell says, and Max has to suppress the smile tugging at his mouth as he turns back.

“Yeah?”

“Can I talk to Kimi?”

Max freezes. Of all things, he hadn’t expected that. “What do you want to talk to Kimi about?”

“I want to ask him a few questions.” Russell straightens, almost bracing himself. “Before I decide whether to take this deal or not.”

“You want to check if his soul is still worth saving,” Max says, unable to keep the derision out of his voice. “Sorry. I’m afraid I must decline. I don’t make the saving of Kimi and the others conditional.”

“Neither do I,” Russell returns immediately. “I just want to talk to him.”

“No.” Max doesn’t even pretend to consider it.

“Why not?” Russell steps forward just a little, and that gleam in his eyes – Max can’t tell whether he wants to wipe it off his face or lean into it. “Is it because he doesn’t know you’re planning to sacrifice yourself for them?”

They stare at each other in the dim light of Russell’s living room: Max irritated that Russell pieced it together so quickly, Russell visibly thrown that Max is behaving in a way he cannot square with his understanding of him. Max can practically see the thoughts racing behind those glacial eyes – is this genuine selflessness? Is it a manipulation? Is Max playing him or telling the truth? Russell cannot decide, and the uncertainty rattles him.

But there is nothing to figure out. No trap, no hidden angle. Max has always known he would keep the rookies safe, no matter the cost – but only here, in Russell’s warm, orderly apartment with its corkboard full of their old traces, does he realise just how much he owes them. How much he cares. How far he would go.

“I’m not Kimi’s jailer,” Max says at last. “So I’ll tell him you want to meet. If he seeks you out, then he wants to see you too. But don’t put that on me if he doesn’t.”

“Fine.”

“And don’t tell him about this deal. Otherwise it’s off.”

Russell breathes in slowly, a small crease cutting between his brows. “I won’t.”

“Great,” Max says, and crouches to give Jimmy one last scratch on the head. The cat meows loudly, as if to inform both of them that he is still, outrageously, unfed. “I guess I’ll see you.”

“Don’t you dare break in here again. I swear to fucking God.”

But Max only laughs, throws him a wink, and strolls out of the apartment as if he’d been an invited guest the entire time. And he knows – with absolute certainty – that he’ll be back.

▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱▰▱

Max always feels uneasy when he sends the rookies out, a baseline hum of worry that has accompanied him since the day he took them in. But lately, it’s become something else entirely – an anxiety he didn’t know he was capable of feeling. Even with Russell still weighing his deal, and even with Oscar having scrubbed their names from the database and severed every digital thread connecting them to the tipline, the dread hasn’t let up. Oscar assured him the only people who knew about the earlier tips were Russell and the overeager blond intern – and Russell, so far, hasn’t said a single word to anyone.

Isack, meanwhile, is consumed by plotting revenge on the blond pestilence, as he calls him, but Oscar has forbidden him from so much as glaring in the intern’s direction. Max is starting to worry about Oscar’s insistence that Russell’s team remain unharmed. He keeps saying this isn’t the time to get petty, not while they’re in the most delicate stage of their plan. 

Three weeks. That’s all they have to hold this tension – three weeks until Lando’s birthday passes and with it the double heist. Oscar has already prepared the security overhaul at Lando’s estate, in his role as resident data analyst who needs to check the system for “probable exploits,” while in reality embedding himself in every fibre of it. 

He’s in constant contact with one of Lando’s household staff; together they’ve been refurbishing the system, installing new cameras, replacing cables – all under the blessing of the National Gallery, which is delighted to have their newly unveiled Van Eyck delivered back to London under such stringent security.

In truth, the system is one hundred percent Oscar’s. Every line of code, every camera feed, every access point now bows to him. Of course, once the heist is done, Oscar will have to slip from Russell’s taskforce – but that’s fine. By then he won’t be needed there anymore. If everything goes according to plan, Oscar will be gone, Fernando will be gone, the rookies will be gone. All of them, scattered like dandelion seeds across borders.

What Max chooses to do… he still hasn’t decided. He isn’t above turning himself in – in fact, he’s already accepted that he probably will, if that’s what it takes to keep the rookies safe. The contingency plan Fernando is running point on accounts for that: a coordinated exit for all of them, the rookies slipping out of the country under new identities, Fernando returning to Spain, Oscar vanishing back to Australia. Max is to meet them later, regroup, disappear with them. Only Fernando doesn’t know that Max has no intention of boarding that plane.

A major part of Max’s plan depends on him staying behind, taking the fall, becoming the scapegoat – the one thing he can give the boys that no one else ever gave him.

So if it really goes that way, he has to make his last weeks count. His last weeks with Kimi, too, who he still hasn’t told about Russell wanting to meet with him. He sends Kimi out to shadow one of Lawrence’s men – in fact, the person crucial to all of it; the head consultant at the outside contractor’s firm that handles the Stroll bonds Max will be thawing with a little unwitting inside help of Lance’s cooperation during Lando’s birthday party.

Kimi needs to learn his movements, find out his close contacts, get really close – and Sergio Perez is a very difficult man to figure out. But Max has absolutely no doubt that Kimi will get it done. The main office of the consulting firm is a bit outside London, in a fetching village in the south near Brighton, and Max meets Kimi there after his favourite rookie has spent two days shadowing Perez and learning his every move. Together they make their way down to Brighton in a car that Max… well… might have stolen.

Max listens to Kimi’s recounting of the past two days he has spent shadowing Perez while the boy sits in his passenger seat in that jacket that’s a little too big on him – most of his clothes are.

“He talks to Lawrence each morning,” Kimi lets him know, “before he leaves for the office. They have a sort of morning call where Stroll tells Perez what investments he wants him to make. He doesn’t name specific stocks, more like… general directions, and Perez does it at his own discretion.”

Max nods slowly, turning on the wipers as they enter the typical drizzle that only gets worse the closer they get to the coast. “What’s the contingency for an emergency? Did you find out what happens when the stocks fall but Stroll can’t be reached?”

“Perez handles it too,” Kimi says confidently. “He’s got the power and the authority. So if Oscar manages to get Lance’s phone at the party and hack into the Stroll system, and we simulate a falling-stocks emergency, Perez would instantly go into selling.”

“Perfect,” Max replies with a small, satisfied grin. “Does he work closely with the offices in Canada and the US?”

Kimi knits his brows. “Not really, at least not in a way where Lawrence trusts them more. That’s why he’s taken Perez to London with him now that they’ve got the whole Aston deal.” He glances over at Max, curiosity in his eyes. “Did you know the Strolls are planning a sort of Porsche Supercup knockoff, but with Valkyries?”

Max has heard the whispers from the more car-savvy parts of his network. “As far as I’ve heard, they’ve already started recruiting drivers. Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, for example.”

Kimi’s eyes go wide. “Wow. They’re French auto-racing royalty. Isack told me about them. They hate each other’s guts, though, so good luck turning them into the joint faces of a Valkyrie SuperCup enterprise.”

Max laughs. “You know your racing drivers.”

“I am named after Kimi Räikkönen,” Kimi replies, frowning a little. “Supposedly. Nonna never really confirmed it, but I was born the year Räikkönen was fighting tooth and nail for that Ferrari championship, so yeah – where else would that name have come from?”

Max laughs. “My father wanted to name me after a racing driver too. Jackie Ickx or someone like that – but as you know, my grandmother had other plans.”

Kimi’s brow furrows again. “I don’t know who that is.”

“He’s old and Belgian,” Max says with a small grin. “And now I’m named after a Roman knight with a horrible accent who overreached and got beheaded.”

“It’s so weird to be named after someone,” Kimi muses. “I don’t fully get why you, as parents, would do that. You start your life with these heavy-handed expectations you’ll never be able to fulfil anyway.”

“I find it especially bad if you’re named after your dad.” Max grins while changing lanes on the A23. “What kind of egomaniac do you have to be to say, ‘I’m going to name my kid after a great person. Myself.’”

Kimi giggles, but then turns serious again. “I wonder if my dad chose my first name.”

“Did your mom ever say anything about that?” Max looks over at him, taking the rare opportunity to let Kimi talk about his father.

“No.” Kimi furrows his brow. “She never talks about him. But I think he’s from England. Maybe I even know him. But as far as I am aware, he has a family. I’ve got a half-sister, supposedly.”

Max puffs out his cheeks. “That’s crazy to think about. Does she live in London?”

“I don’t know,” Kimi says. “Sometimes I think my mom just invented him. This rich married man who swept her off her feet. Especially because I don’t think he’s ever paid us a dime.”

“Do you want to find him?” Max asks. “We could look for him, if you wanted.”

Kimi thinks about it for a moment. “I’d rather not meet him,” he finally says. “I think it would yield nothing good. There has to be a reason he never reached out.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know about you.”

Kimi leans his head against the window, watching the unhomely October landscape roll by – the brown grass, the grey sky, the trees losing their golden leaves. “Maybe. But I keep thinking about this supposed half-sister. I don’t want to drop all of that on her. Finding out her dad is probably a bit of a dick.”

Max gives him a small smile. “Chances are she already knows. You just… know these things about your dad.”

Kimi throws him a quick sideways glance. He’s already figured out that Max’s relationship with his father was more than poor – probably heard the rumours about Max killing him, too. Very substantiated rumours, in fact, as Max confessed to Russell only a few nights ago. Why he did that, he still doesn’t know. He’s never breathed a word of it to another living person. He doesn’t correct people when they rightfully assume he did it, but that was the first time the words had actually left his lips.

Well, not entirely. He told his sister. But she’d been too dead to hear him.

Ever since he’d been in Russell’s apartment, since Russell had shown him again that strange, terrible kinship between them – in the way those hands had closed around his throat so naturally – Max has been haunted by him. More than before. He’s become a frequent visitor in Max’s dreams, anachronistically dropped into Max’s classic nightmare rotation: the trailer park, the Flemish farmhouse. Russell is always a silent observer – watching Max being mistreated by his cousins, tormented by his father – but never doing anything. Just watching.

The others haven’t commented on the bruises – to them, they’re just Max’s usual battle wounds, the kind they’ve grown used to seeing. Oscar, however, was the only one who knew Max went to see Russell, and he did make a comment. There had been something in his eyes when he asked about it. Like he didn’t fully understand what Max was getting himself into, yet somehow judged him anyway. 

Because Oscar is Oscar, and he notices everything, he’d dropped a throwaway line about Russell being in an especially foul mood lately. Jumpy, almost distracted. And then he’d stared at Max for ten full seconds before moving on.

“Why are we going south, by the way?” Kimi asks after a while. “Shouldn’t we be going back up to London?”

“Yeah, in a minute,” Max says. “I’ve got a surprise for you. A reward for your stakeout on Perez.”

Kimi looks at him, brow furrowed. “Max, that’s my job. You don’t have to reward me.”

“I know,” Max says. “And don’t tell Isack – he’ll throw hands.”

A glimmer sparks in Kimi’s eyes. Max knows that, deep down, Kimi enjoys being the favourite – even though he doesn’t quite understand why Max prefers him just a tiny bit more than the others. In all honesty, neither does Max. He knows all the rookies have objectively admirable talents, but maybe it’s because Kimi is the most similar to him. Or maybe it’s because he knows Russell once had this bond with him, and Max wants to see how deep it still runs.

“No way!” Kimi gasps, realising where they’re heading as Max takes a few obvious turns toward the Falmer Stadium. “We’re going to see Brighton Albion?”

“Yeah,” Max says. “They’re playing Spurs tonight.”

Kimi stares at him, stunned. “I fucking love Spurs. They’re my favourite team ever. Maybe after Bologna FC. That’s crazy, Max! How did you know?”

“That you like the Spurs?” Max laughs. “Maybe the fact you run around in their jersey half the time? And since we were already near Brighton and Albion is playing them tonight, I thought we could just as well go.”

Kimi groans. “It’s gonna be impossible for me to shut up about this in front of Isack. That dumbass loves Arsenal way too much, and it’s been ages since I’ve been to a Premier League game.” He makes a whole show of zipping his lips and throwing away the imaginary key out the window. “But my lips shall stay sealed.”

“When was the last time you went?” Max asks, even though he knows the answer exactly – and wants to see how honest Kimi’s going to be.

“It’s got to be more than two years now,” Kimi says. “I think I went to see Spurs play Crystal Palace with…” He trails off, eyes flicking away like a skittish animal. “With a friend.”

“A friend?” Max prods. “Isack?”

“No, no.” Kimi shakes his head quickly. “A different friend.”

Max decides not to push. If Kimi doesn’t want to say Russell’s name, he won’t force him.

He parks the car in an inconspicuous spot – the thing is stolen, after all – but at least it’s a normal car, one he passes every day on his way to his routine Russell stake-out. It hasn’t been moved in a while, so chances are he can return it later without anyone noticing it was gone.

Fans are already streaming toward the stadium in their usual chaotic rush: Albion’s blue and white mingling with Spurs’ navy. Max and Kimi head toward their seats at the very top, tucked under the roof – which is vital, because it’s still drizzling. Max watches Kimi take it all in; it’s probably the first normal, age-appropriate thing he’s done in ages. Walking among peers, surrounded by boys his age, all buzzing with the same Friday-night excitement for the match.

And Max is utterly annoyed that it took that stupid photo on Russell’s corkboard to make him realise Kimi likes going to games. He might have won the battle for Kimi – but at what cost? It feels like Russell is haunting their relationship in ways Max refuses to admit, and probably isn’t even fully aware of.

“Max, this is so great,” Kimi says, grinning as they settle into their seats. “But you really shouldn’t have.”

“I wanted to,” Max replies with an uncharacteristically earnest smile. “I don’t think you realise how indispensable you are to this operation. I’ve never met someone who can observe people the way you do – who jumps to the right conclusions that quickly. I’m honoured you think my cause is worth joining.”

Kimi instantly looks away, cheeks colouring. Max almost never hands out praise like this; the rookie clearly doesn’t know what to do with it.

“I never understood what you saw in me,” Kimi admits after a moment, eyes fixed on the players warming up on the pitch, firing balls into empty nets. “I mean I barely finished high school.”

Max knows exactly where all roads lead, so he decides to get ahead of it before he starts circling around the point like an idiot. “Kimi, can I ask you something?”

Kimi glances back at him, surprised – Max rarely asks for permission. “Yeah. Anything.”

“Would you mind explaining your relationship with George Russell a little more?” Max watches him carefully. Kimi blinks fast, caught off guard in a way he never is on jobs. “It has… come up.”

“Did you meet with George?” Kimi asks, voice tight.

Max decides honesty will get him farther than dancing around the truth. “Yeah. A few times now.”

“Why?”

“That’s a good question,” Max says slowly. “I suppose I’m… fascinated by him. Not least because of you boys. I’m only now starting to realise what kind of bond you had with him.”

Kimi doesn’t answer. He looks genuinely tortured – that old, unresolved loyalty tightening around his ribs. God, he still loves him. And the guilt of abandoning him is gnawing him alive.

“We don’t have to talk about him,” Max says gently. “I was just… now that I’ve met him myself, I’m curious what your version of him is.”

Kimi stays quiet for a few beats, then finally exhales. “I’d never met anyone like him before. All my life I think I was… searching for guidance without realising it. Because I didn’t have a father, and my mum was… well, you know how she was. So when I got sent to RE:START, there was this man. A cop – but a good one. Or at least I thought so. He seemed genuinely interested in us. He talked with us. Took us seriously. Taught us real things.”

“How old were you?” Max asks.

“Sixteen, I think.” Kimi picks at the sleeve of his too-big jacket. “George was already there. Isack and I ended up in the same group, and Isack already knew Gabi through Franco. So we became this little unit. Tina was around too. And… George sort of took us on.”

“He liked you,” Max says, prompting.

Kimi shrugs, uncomfortable with the truth. “Yeah. I think he did. He saw potential in us. Back then I thought he was ancient, but he must’ve been twenty-six. He just… felt like someone who had his shit together. But he was kind. Funny. He made the world make sense for a few hours a day. And I guess whatever part of me had been looking for a mentor jumped on it instantly. The others liked him, but not the way I did. And he liked me. I started going to the centre even on days I didn’t have to, just to talk to him.”

Max studies him. “What did you like about him so much?”

Kimi thinks for a long moment, still refusing to look at Max, letting his eyes drift instead over the stadium, the pitch, the sky above them already bruising into dusk.

“I could tell instantly that he came from a household like mine,” he finally says. “But somehow he’d made it out. There was nothing about him that still carried that stain – that harrowing feeling of being discarded, of being scum, of not being worth the air you breathe. He’d crawled out, healed himself, and now he was working for something bigger. He seemed almost… aureated by it.”

Max can understand that. Though he isn’t convinced how much of that shine is real – Russell’s reaction to him has proven the façade cracks.

“And he seemed so… taken with me,” Kimi continues. “He loved all of us, sure, but I think he saw something of himself in me.” He rolls his eyes at himself. “I know that sounds cliché, but… I liked it. I know you hate him – and you have your reasons – but there’s something about him. You want to be liked by him.”

Max swallows down the spike of recognition that hits him a little too sharply.

“And how did you two grow closer?” he asks.

“Through our interests,” Kimi replies after a few seconds. “I liked comic books, and he did too. And I loved to game, but I had no real opportunity anymore after my mom flipped and sold my PlayStation, so he let me play on his.”

“This doesn’t sound like the Russell I know,” Max murmurs, and Kimi gives him a puzzled glance.

“How well do you know him?”

“Not well,” Max admits, shifting back in the hard plastic seat and folding his arms. “I’ve met him three times. And you were there thirty-three percent of the time.”

“Why so often?”

“We keep running into each other,” Max replies with a crooked smile, and Kimi lets out a short huff.

“I’m surprised he hasn’t turned you in.”

Max laughs softly. “You think I’d let myself get caught by him?”

Kimi’s shoulders loosen. “You’re right. But… I don’t know. It’s weird. Knowing you talked to him.”

“Why is it weird?”

Kimi hesitates, his mouth opening and closing once before he forces out the words. “I… don’t know. Because… you’re the same person. In a vastly different font. Because I had him first, and then I had you – but you’re his opposite. Like his negative. Everything soft in him is sharp in you. Everything he hides, you show.”

The honesty makes something crawl under Max’s skin. Kimi is one of the only people who knows them both, and of course he would draw comparisons – how could he not? And now Max suddenly sees it clearly: Kimi didn’t choose Max over Russell because Max was better. He followed because the others did, because the momentum pulled him along. Because he had to replace one with the other.

“Last time I talked to Russell,” Max says quietly, clearing his throat before he dares to look over at Kimi again, “he told me he wants to speak with you.”

Kimi shakes his head sharply. “I don’t wanna talk to him.”

“But not because of me, right?” Max angles toward him, and Kimi finally drags his gaze away from the lit field below, where the Spurs are retreating into the tunnel. “You don’t have to refuse to see him out of some weird loyalty to me. I’m not that kind of gang leader, if you know what I mean.”

Kimi lets out a quick, incredulous laugh. “You barely are a gang leader. Sometimes I forget you’re, like… wanted by Interpol. You’re just such a normal dude.”

Max gives him a thin smile. “I really am not, Kimi.”

“Are you getting second thoughts about roping a whole bunch of kids into your schemes?” Kimi teases, though there’s warmth beneath it.

“Would it be bad if I did?”

“Max,” Kimi says, turning toward him fully now, his expression gentler than before. “I think I need to make something clear. My friends and I – we didn’t choose you because you dazzled us with some bullshit. We chose you because you told us the truth. And after a whole life of being lied to by people like George – even if it was well-meaning – we’d had enough. Yes, maybe it closed some doors for good, but we talked it through. We understood what we were doing. You know?”

Max doesn’t say: How rational could that conversation have been? Isack and Franco probably vibrating with adrenaline, painting futures in neon; Kimi and Gabi hesitating at first; all of them still children. Children choosing a life Max should never have laid in front of them.

“Are you really getting second thoughts?” Kimi asks again, this time quieter, more intent. “Wow. You wound me, Max. I’ve always been in full command of my mental faculties. I knew exactly what I got myself into.”

“But why did you forsake Russell?” Max asks. He doesn’t say: How could you write him that letter and then point a gun at him?

“Because he lied to me,” Kimi says. “He wanted me to sell my integrity – everything that made me me – just so I could become like him. A faceless cog in the machine.” He exhales, almost bitterly. “George always pretended he had real agency. But he didn’t. He only did what he thought he was supposed to do. Because he doesn’t know who he is. Or what is right. That’s why he can be manipulated. Instrumentalised.”

Max knows exactly what he means. It always starts the same way: Russell falling back on that reflexive, almost doctrinal answer whenever Max confronts him with the greyscale of it all. Because stealing is wrong. Because you cannot rob people. Russell memorized these principles as a counterweight to the chaos he crawled out of. When the world failed him, he clung to the rulebook as if it were a life raft.

Max faced the same bleak nihilism, but his reaction had been the polar opposite. He didn’t pick up a law book and decide that legality and morality were synonymous. He grew up inside the muck of moral ambiguity and, unlike Russell, didn’t run from it. Max liked the bogginess of it all – the shifting, case-by-case nature of ethics, the understanding that very few things were black and white. And when he stepped over a line, he didn’t flay himself alive over it.

Russell was rewarded – predictably, institutionally – for obeying the rules. But Max found something he considers infinitely more valuable: freedom. The freedom to evaluate each situation on its own terms; to refuse the suffocating one-size-fits-all prescriptions Russell clings to; to laugh whenever Russell parrots Kantian maxims like an overeager philosophy freshman every time Max suggests that maybe, just maybe, he deserves to have a little fun.

“Why don’t you want to meet him?” Max asks at last. Kimi bites his lip. “Are you worried he’ll talk you into going back?”

“No,” Kimi answers immediately. “Like I said, Max, I made my choice. I just… don’t want to feel his expectations on me again. I don’t want to look at him and see how he thinks I failed him.”

But didn’t you hear him at the museum? Max almost says. Russell admitted he was wrong. He begged you to listen. He knows where he lost you. He knows exactly what he broke.

Max doesn’t understand why he is suddenly, almost painfully, invested in whatever knot still ties Kimi to Russell – especially now, when he’s knee-deep in planning the single most important operation of his life, the obsession that has shaped him for six years, if not since childhood. He’s always been protective of Kimi, but ever since discovering the depth of his history with Russell – the duality of it, the loyalty and the betrayal, the way Russell seems to carry Kimi’s absence like a wound – Max finds himself unable to leave it alone.

Maybe it’s because he wants Kimi to choose him. Fully. Finally. And the only way to know if he will is to push him toward Russell and see whether he comes back.

It hits Max then, in a quiet, unpleasant flash: this is as much about Russell as it is about Kimi.

“Absolutely fine,” Max says. “You don’t have to meet him.”

“I’m surprised you even brought it up,” Kimi replies, turning toward him. “I didn’t think you wanted me anywhere near him.”

“I know I have nothing to fear from him,” Max answers, and even as he says it he knows he isn’t being fully honest. He can’t tell Kimi the truth – that Russell agreeing to Max’s deranged little bargain hinges on seeing Kimi first, on evaluating whatever ‘condition of his soul’ Russell believes he can still influence. Maybe Russell just misses him; he probably does; but Max doubts it would change anything.

“I think it speaks volumes about the person you are,” Max continues, letting his gaze drift over the crowd below them. “That you chose me, back then. That you saw Russell for who he was. A fraud.”

Kimi doesn’t reply, only chews on his lip.

“But that doesn’t mean you have to completely forsake whatever relationship you had with him,” Max adds. “He meant a lot to you. You shouldn’t lose that.”

“How do you expect that to work?” Kimi scoffs, folding his arms and hooking his feet onto the seat in front of him. “As long as I’m what I am now, George will try to proselytize me. Drag me back to the ‘good side’ or whatever. That’s why he wants to meet – one last attempt to save my soul. That’s what it’s always been about for him.”

Max wants to agree. Russell is a self-involved, moralising little bitch – but he can’t forget the look on Russell’s face in the museum when Max had pulled Kimi away. That hadn’t been about losing the argument; it had been about losing someone who had mattered to him. And Kimi is right: it doesn’t make sense to rekindle anything with Russell when it would only lead to him pushing again, trying to mold Kimi into something he never asked to be. Kimi made his choice. Max should be grateful for it, accept the sacrifice and not meddle – not drag him back into Russell’s orbit as if Kimi needs to be “restored” to a boy he might have been before Max ever got his hooks into him.

He realizes, with a stab of annoyance at himself, that he is slipping toward the same trap Russell always falls into: moralising the whole affair. Russell isn’t the hero here; Max isn’t the villain. Kimi choosing Max wasn’t the corruption of a pure soul – it was the moment he stepped out of the story Russell had tried to write for him. Out of the curated, sanitized worldview Russell mistook for salvation. Away from the Matrix blue pill Russell kept offering as if it were communion. It wasn’t Kimi falling; it was Kimi waking up. Crawling out of Plato’s cave and seeing the world for what it was.

Max has no right to drag him back toward Russell – not for closure, not for curiosity, not for some ridiculous hope that Kimi will “prove” his loyalty by choosing Max again. He already chose.

Max puts his hand on Kimi’s shoulder and squeezes, a steadying weight. Kimi turns toward him; his eyes are a little red, but he’s trying to hide it.

“You’re a good kid,” Max says. “No matter what Russell thinks.”

“George hasn’t been important to me for a while,” Kimi murmurs, his voice so faint Max almost loses it under the swelling chants of the stadium. Then, after a breath, he adds, “I think you might be confusing me with you.”

Before Max can process that – before he can even decide whether it stings or hits too close to the bone – the pitch below them erupts. The stadium crowds roar to life as both teams spill out of the tunnel, the kind of deafening, primal cheer that rolls up the stands like a wave. Everyone rises in unison, and Kimi and Max stand with them.

Kimi’s grin spreads instantly, bright and unguarded, everything else forgotten the moment he sees the Spurs jogging onto the field. He leans forward on the railing, vibrating with excitement like any other eighteen-year-old seeing his favourite team jog onto the pitch.

Max watches him for a moment before his gaze drifts back to the pitch – but Kimi’s words refuse to leave him. I think you might be confusing me with you.

Maybe he is. Because there’s a tie between him and Russell that has nothing to do with Kimi at all.